THE  APPRECIATION 
OF  LITERATURE 


GEORGE  E.WOODBERRY 


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LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


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Microsoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/appreciationofliOOwoodiala 


THE  APPRECIATION  OF  LITERATURE 


4 


THE  APPRECIATION 
OF  LITERATURE 


BY 


[  GEORGE   E.   WOODBERRY 

Xiithor  of  " Heart  of  Man,"  " Poems," 


"The  Torch,"  etc. 


NEW  YORK 

THE  BAKER  &  TAYLOR  COMPANY 

1909 


Copyright,  1907,  by 
The  Baker  &  Taylor  Company 

Pubiuhed,  September,  1907 
Reprinted,  October,  1909 


The  Plimpton  Press  Norwood  Mass.  U£.  A. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I.     First  Principles 

PAGE 
.          .                 1 

II. 

Lyrical  Poetry 

.      .       28 

III. 

Narrative  Poetry  . 

.      .       54 

IV. 

Dramatic  Poetry     . 

.      .       80 

V. 

Fiction 

.      .      108 

VI. 

Other  Prose  Forms 

.      .      147 

VII. 

Practical  Suggestions 

.      .      172 

ILLUSTRATIONS 

Greek  Theater  at  Taormina       .       Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

Keats 28 

Byron 54 

Milton 62 

Globe  Theater 80 

Goldsmith 108 

Lamb 147 

Athens  Restored 172 


THE  APPRECIATION  OF  LITERATURE 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

CHAPTER  I 

FIRST   PRINCIPLES 

LITERATURE  is  an  art  of  expression. 
The  material  which  it  employs  is  ex- 
perience; or,  in  other  words,  literature  is  the 
expression  of  life.  Action,  emotion  and  thought 
are  the  three  great  divisions  of  life,  and  con- 
stitute experience.  Literature  undertakes  to 
represent  such  experience  through  the  medium 
of  language,  and  to  bring  it  home  to  the  under- 
standing of  the  reader.  It  is  obvious  that 
literature  makes  its  appeal  to  the  individual 
mind  and  is  intelligible  only  in  so  far  as  the 
individual  is  able  to  comprehend  its  language 
and  interpret  the  experience  there  embedded. 
A  good  reader  is  an  author's  best  fortune,  for 
the  writer  strives  in  vain  unless  he  be  under- 
stood. The  reader's  own  experience  is  the  key 
to  literature.  It  may  be  direct  experience, 
events  and  passions  personal  to  himself;  or  it 

1 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

may  be  indirect,  events  and  passions  observed 
in  the  career  of  others,  or  at  least  learned  by 
report;  but  in  any  case  the  power  to  understand 
indirect  experience,  that  is,  experience  not 
one's  own,  depends  on  the  existence  of  a  com- 
mon human  nature  and  on  the  share  of  it 
which  the  reader  has  already  realized  in  his  own 
life  and  self -consciousness.  It  is  by  sympathy 
and  imagination  that  one  enters  into  the  lives 
and  fortunes  of  others;  and  these  two  faculties, 
which  are  the  great  interpretative  powers  of 
literature,  have  richness,  strength  and  scope  in 
proportion  to  the  quality  and  quantity  of  in- 
dividual experience,  to  the  depth  and  range  of 
one's  own  life.  Sympathy  and  imagination 
are  the  faculties  which  literature  most  cultivates 
by  exercise,  and  the  enlightenment  which  litera- 
ture brings  is  in  the  main  achieved  through 
them.  It  is  plain  that  the  appreciation  of 
literature  is  a  continuing  process,  and  depends 
on  increase  of  experience  in  the  personal  life 
and  on  growth  of  the  imaginative  and  sym- 
pathetic powers;  hence  it  is  changeable  in 
taste  and  standard,  and  varies  from  one  stage 
of  life  to  another.  It  is  a  measure  of  growth 
because  it  proceeds  from  growth;  to  love  the 

2 


First  Principles 

poets  is  a  certificate  of  manhood,  a  proof  that 
one  has  put  forth  the  powers  and  appropriated 
the  means  of  life,  that  one  is  on  the  way  at  least 
to  be  humanized.  Literature  is  the  foremost 
of  the  humanities,  of  those  instrumentalities  by 
which  man  becomes  more  completely  human; 
and  in  the  individual  this  end  is  furthered  in 
proportion  as  he  understands  human  nature  in 
others  under  its  various  modes  and  brings  forth 
from  it  in  himself  the  richest  experience  of  its 
capacities.  Openness  to  experience,  or  sensi- 
bility, is  the  prime  quality  of  the  good  reader; 
and  to  this  the  writer  adds,  on  the  active  or 
creative  side,  the  power  of  expression  through 
language.  These  two  faculties  are  the  essen- 
tial constituents  of  literary  genius.  The  appro- 
priation of  a  work  of  genius  is,  in  a  certain 
sense,  a  repetition  of  the  act  of  creation  under 
different  circumstances,  and  the  good  reader 
must  share  in  the  genius  of  his  author  in  how- 
ever pale  a  form  and  on  however  low  a  scale. 
It  has  long  been  recognized  that  this  likeness 
exists  between  the  two;  for  the  act  of  reading  is 
a  blending  of  two  souls,  nor  is  it  seldom  that  the 
reader  brings  the  best  part,  vivifying  his  author 
with  his  own  memory  and  aspiration  and  im- 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

parting  a  flame  to  the  words  from  his  own 
soul.  The  appreciation  of  literature  is  thus  by 
no  means  a  simple  matter;  it  is  not  the  ability 
to  read,  nor  even  a  canon  of  criticism  and  rules 
of  admiration  and  censure  that  are  required; 
but  a  live  soul,  full  of  curiosity  and  interest  in 
life,  sensitive  to  impressions,  acute  and  subtle 
in  reception,  prompt  to  complete  a  suggestion, 
and  always  ready  with  the  light  of  its  own  life 
to  serve  as  a  lamp  unto  its  feet.  Appreciation 
of  literature,  too,  is  neither  rapid  nor  final;  it 
moves  with  no  swifter  step  than  life  itself,  and 
it  opens,  like  life,  always  on  larger  horizons 
and  other  labors. 

Experience,  such  as  has  been  indicated,  is 
usually  found  in  literature  in  a  complex  form. 
It  may  be  usefully  discriminated  as  either 
personal,  national  or  universal,  and  in  authors 
individually  some  one  of  these  kinds  is  generally 
predominant.  Byron  is  the  type  of  the  personal 
writer,  interested  in  his  own  moods  and  fortunes, 
egotistic  in  all  his  life  forces,  creating  his  heroes 
in  his  own  image  and  repeating  in  them  his 
qualities,  his  ambitions  and  disillusions,  giving 
his  confession  through  their  lips.  Virgil  is  the 
most    distinguished    example    of    the    national 

4 


First  Principles 

writer;  one  always  thinks  of  Rome  in  the  same 
breath,  — "Roman  Virgil,"  as  Tennyson  begins 
his  noble  tribute.  Virgil  set  forth  the  specific 
and  peculiar  experience  of  the  Roman  state, 
giving  expression  to  common  traits  and  inter- 
ests, the  tradition  and  ideals  and  manners  of 
the  empire  that  had  come  to  be  out  of  the  toil 
of  the  fathers  and  was  then  the  glory  of  the 
earth.  Universal  experience  is  that  which  is 
the  same  for  all  men,  whatever  their  race, 
country  or  age,  and  is  exemplified  most  plainly 
by  the  stories  of  Scripture  which  have  had 
greatest  currency,  and  in  a  single  author  most 
purely  by  Shakespeare.  The  scale  of  experience 
with  which  literature  deals,  in  other  words, 
begins  with  the  narrow  circle  of  the  writer's 
own  life  and  widens  out  through  his  city,  people, 
nation,  his  age,  until  it  includes  humanity  as 
such;  and  in  the  final  and  simplest  form  this 
experience  is  of  interest,  not  because  it  was  one 
man's  or  one  nation's,  but  because  it  may  be  the 
experience  of  any  man  put  in  such  circumstances. 
Every  man  has  this  threefold  ply  in  his  life;  he 
has  that  human  nature  which  is  common  to  the 
race  with  its  unchanging  passions,  needs  and 
vicissitude  of  human  events,   and  he  adds  to 

5 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

this  the  special  traits  of  his  age  and  country, 
which  he  also  has  in  common  with  his  fellows; 
and  besides  he  possesses  peculiarities  of  charac- 
ter and  temperament  and  fortune  in  life  in  which 
his  individuality  lies.  Literature  corresponds 
to  this  arrangement  by  presenting  its  work 
similarly  woven  of  individual,  national  and 
universal  strands,  and  it  has  more  breadth  of 
significance  in  proportion  as  it  embodies  ex- 
perience most  purely  in  the  Shakespearian  or 
Scriptural  type.  The  appreciation  of  literature 
in  this  type  is  most  ready,  in  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  cases,  because  a  certain  preparation  in 
history  or  biography  is  necessary  to  the  com- 
prehension of  the  national  and  personal  types. 
The  direct  appeal  to  experience,  in  other  words, 
without  the  intervention  of  study,  is  made  on  the 
ground  of  universal  life;  and  to  this  kind,  by 
virtue  of  the  universal  element  in  it,  the  most 
enduring  literature  belongs. 

To  approach  the  matter  in  another  way,  life 
is  infinite  in  the  number  of  its  phenomena, 
which  taken  together  make  up  experience;  but 
there  is  great  sameness  in  the  phenomena.  The 
monotony  of  human  life  is  one  of  the  final  and 
persistent   impressions   made   upon   the   reader 

6 


First  Principles 

as  upon  the  traveler.  It  is  natural,  therefore, 
that  a  love  song  that  was  merely  a  personal 
effusion  of  feeling  sung  in  Persia  centuries  ago 
should  seem  to  pour  forth  the  genuine  emotion 
of  some  lover  of  to-day  in  a  far-off  land  and 
should  serve  him  as  the  verbal  channel  of  his 
joy  or  grief.  Emotion  has  thus  prepared  for  it 
in  lyric  poetry  of  all  lands  a  ritual  already  written 
and  established.  Action,  likewise,  whose  poetic 
form  is  epic  and  dramatic  poetry,  has  a  litera- 
ture of  war  and  passion  that  passes  current 
everywhere;  and  thought,  the  third  great  form 
of  experience,  which  is  set  forth  in  philosophy 
or  science,  sums  up  its  formulas  of  knowledge 
and  wisdom  which  serve  equally  in  all  languages. 
The  common  element  is  so  great,  the  limits  of 
human  experience  in  all  its  forms  are  so  re- 
stricted, that  there  results  this  easy  communi- 
cation and  interchange  between  races  and  ages. 
Literature,  so  built  up  and  disseminated,  while 
it  always  offers  a  wealth  of  expression  for  the 
normal  and  mediocre  experience  of  life,  the 
commonplace,  nevertheless  tends  to  prefer,  in 
its  high  examples,  that  which  is  surpassing  in 
emotion,  action  and  thought,  and  to  conserve 
this,  however  far  beyond  reality,  as  the  mode 

7 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

of  overflow  of  the  human  soul  in  its  aspiration 
and  its  dream  of  what  is  possible  to  itself. 
Man  is  a  dreamer  even  more  than  he  is  an 
actor;  his  actions  indeed  are  hardly  more  than 
fragments  and  relics  of  his  dreams.  This  is  the 
realm  of  the  ideal,  and  literature  treasures 
there  its  greatest  works,  those  which  are  espe- 
cially regarded  as  its  works  of  high  genius  in 
creative  imagination.  The  material  is  still  ex- 
perience, and  the  expression  sought  is  still  the 
expression  of  life,  but  it  is  experience  trans- 
formed by  being  newly  arranged  and  it  is  life 
expressed  rather  in  its  function  of  power  than 
in  its  operation  of  reality.  This  change  which 
passes  upon  experience  and  gives  scope  to  the 
soul's  power  is  brought  about  by  the  inter- 
vention of  art;  for  literature  is  not  a  record  of 
experience  primarily  and  simply,  but  it  is  an 
art  using  experience  for  ulterior  ends. 

Experience,  things  as  they  occur,  the  mere 
material  of  expression,  is  raw  material,  a  crude 
agglomeration,  life  just  as  it  comes  to  pass. 
If  a  newspaper  were  the  complete  history  of  a 
day,  as  a  journalist  once  defined  it,  this  would 
be  an  example  of  the  expression  in  language 
of  such  experience;  but  it  would  not  be  litera- 

8 


First  Principles 

ture,  because  there  would  have  been  no  inter- 
vention of  art  in  the  case.  The  primary  step 
in  art  is  selection  from  the  crude  mass  of  material 
of  such  parts  as  will  serve  the  purpose  of  the 
writer;  these  parts  are  then  combined  so  as  to 
make  a  whole,  that  is,  they  are  put  in  necessary 
relations  one  with  another  such  that  if  any  part 
were  to  be  taken  away  the  whole  would  fall  to 
pieces  through  lack  of  support;  a  whole  so 
constructed  is  said  to  have  organic  unity,  the 
unity  of  an  organism.  This  unity  is  the  end 
of  art,  and  the  steps  to  it  are  selection  and 
logical  combination.  This  is  true  of  the  arts 
in  general,  and  gave  rise  to  Michael  Angelo's 
well-known  definition,  —  "art  is  the  purgation 
of  superfluities."  In  literature  such  construc- 
tion is  illustrated  by  the  general  nature  of  plot, 
which  is  a  connection  of  events  in  the  relation 
of  cause  and  effect  such  that  each  is  necessary 
to  the  course  and  issue  of  the  action  as  a  whole, 
and  none  superfluous.  Hardly  inferior  to  the 
use  of  plot  in  the  field  of  action  as  an  artistic 
resource  in  literature  is  the  employment  of  type 
in  the  field  of  character ;  here  a  similar  process  of 
selection  takes  place  in  consequence  of  which  the 
person,    or    type,    possesses    all    the    qualities 

9 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

common  to  a  class  of  individuals  and  no  quality 
peculiar  to  any  one  individual;  this  is  ideal 
character.  Thus  Romeo  is  all  a  lover,  Achilles 
all  a  hero,  Iago  all  a  villain.  Ideal  character, 
or  type,  and  ideal  action,  or  plot,  are  the  two 
great  modes  of  creative  art  in  imaginative 
literature;  but  there  are  besides  many  other 
artistic  means  employed  by  literature  in  its 
representation  of  life.  These  two  serve  suffi- 
ciently to  illustrate  the  use  of  art  made  by  litera- 
ture, which  is  to  clarify  the  experience  which 
is  its  material;  thus  plot  rationalizes  events 
under  the  law  of  cause  and  effect,  and  type 
simplifies  character  by  presenting  it  under  a 
single  and  immutable  aspect,  or  by  restricting 
attention  to  a  few  phases  of  it  within  a  narrow 
range.  Without  entering  on  the  mazes  of 
aesthetic  theory,  where  there  is  little  certainty, 
it  is  enough  to  observe  that  art  in  general  seeks 
order  in  life  and  obtains  it  by  a  process  of 
segregation  and  recombination,  whether  the 
order  so  found  be  something  plucked  from  the 
chaos  of  nature  and  revealed  as  an  inner  har- 
mony of  the  universe,  or  be  merely  the  grace 
flowing  from  man  upon  the  world  and  the  illu- 
sion of  his  limiting  intelligence.    The  presence  of 

10 


First  Principles 

this  order  in  art  is  plain ;  and  also  the  principle 
of  clarification,  of  simplification,  of  economy 
in  the  interest  of  an  intelligible  and  compre- 
hensive conception  of  experience,  operating  to 
disclose  this  order,  is  likewise  to  be  observed. 
Whatever  may  be  the  validity  of  art,  in  the 
philosophic  sense,  what  is  essential  here  is  the 
simple  fact  of  its  presence  as  the  mode  by  which 
literature  deals  with  experience  in  order  to  draw 
from  life  its  use  and  meaning  for  men.  The 
conclusion  is  that  literature  represents  life  in 
certain  formal  ways;  a  degree  of  formalism  is 
indeed  inseparable  from  literature,  as  from  all 
the  other  arts,  and  some  acquaintance  with  its 
traditionary  forms  is  indispensable  to  the  appre- 
ciation of  its  contents,  while,  besides,  the  pleasure 
of  the  forms  themselves  is  a  part  of  its  real 
value.  The  importance  of  the  formal  side  of 
literature  is  not  lessened  by  the  fact  that  the 
perception  of  form  and  delight  in  it  are  not 
English  traits  in  a  high  degree;  in  this  respect 
the  southern  nations  excel  the  northern  peoples 
by  far;  it  is  probable,  indeed,  that  for  the  Eng- 
lish generally,  in  approaching  their  literature, 
there  is  a  sense  of  artificiality  in  the  mere  form 
of  verse  greater  than  they  feel  in  the  case  of  a 

11 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

picture  or  a  statue.  The  external  form,  which 
is  generally  described  as  technique,  is  really 
no  more  artificial  than  the  internal  form,  which 
consists  in  the  development  of  the  theme  in- 
dependently of  its  melodic  investiture;  neither 
is  truly  artificial,  but  both  belong  under  artistic 
formalism,  which  is  the  method  whereby  great 
imaginative  literature  takes  body  and  acquires 
its  intense  and  enduring  life. 

In  correspondence  with  the  three  kinds  of 
experience,  personal,  national  and  universal, 
each  recreated  in  artistic  form,  there  are  three 
modes  of  critical  approach  to  literature  in  order 
to  interpret  and  understand  its  contents.  The 
first  and  simplest  is  the  purely  aesthetic,  and  is 
especially  applicable  to  universal  literature;  it 
looks  only  at  the  work,  which  is  freed  from 
conditions  of  time  and  place  and  origin,  analyzes 
its  qualities,  compares  it  with  others,  classifies, 
and  so  judges  it  under  formal  criteria  by  itself 
alone  and  for  its  own  sake  as  an  incarnation  of 
that  human  life,  an  expression  of  that  human 
spirit,  which  is  the  same  yesterday,  to-day  and 
forever,  at  least  within  the  range  of  the  arc 
which  art  has  thus  far  measured;  it  is  this  same- 
ness in  the  soul,  as  interpreted  by  art,  which 

12 


First  Principles 

justifies  the  absolute  nature  of  this  mode  of 
criticism.  The  second  is  the  purely  historical 
mode  of  approach,  and  is  appropriate  to  the 
national  element  in  experience  and  the  works 
which  most  embody  it  in  whatever  form;  it 
looks  at  the  environment,  examines  race,  country 
and  epoch,  and  seeks  to  understand  the  work  as 
merely  the  result  of  general  social  forces  and 
broad  conditions  and  as  the  necessary  and,  as  it 
were,  fatal  expression  of  these,  and  allows  the 
least  possible  part  to  individual  choice  or  in- 
fluence. The  third  mode,  which  is  more 
proper  to  the  personal  element,  is  the  psycho- 
logical; it  looks  at  the  personality  of  the  writer 
and  seeks  to  interpret  his  work  as  the  result 
and  expression  of  his  peculiar  temperament  and 
faculty  under  the  personal  conditions  of  his 
birth,  education  and  opportunities.  All  three 
are  useful  methods  and  are  alike  indispensable; 
and  as  literature  normally  presents  the  three 
kinds  of  experience  blended,  and  seldom  singly 
in  a  pure  form,  it  is  generally  necessary  to  em- 
ploy the  three  kinds  of  criticism,  without  giving 
undue  advantage  to  any  one  of  them,  in  order 
to  grasp  any  great  work  fully  in  its  personality, 
its  historical  significance  and  its  universal  and 

13 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

imperishable  aesthetic  value.  It  is  nevertheless 
true  that  mere  biography  and  mere  history  are 
not,  properly  speaking,  literary  elements,  when 
literature  is  regarded  as  a  fine  art;  they  are 
adjuncts  to  the  interpretation  of  the  work  just 
as  grammar  may  be,  or  archaeology,  or  any 
other  subsidiary  aid;  but  the  characteristic  value 
of  any  literary  work,  that  which  makes  it  litera- 
ture, is  independent  of  these  and  is  a  more  vital 
and  enduring  thing.  This  value  lies  in  its 
being  a  work  of  art. 

The  critical  approach  to  literature  by  what- 
ever mode  implies  study,  an  acquired  knowledge 
of  biography  or  history  or  of  artistic  forms. 
The  direct  aim  of  all  art,  however,  is  to  please, 
and  to  please  immediately;  study  may  be  a  part 
of  the  necessary  preparation  for  appreciation, 
but  it  does  not  enter  into  the  appreciation  itself. 
It  is  useful  to  recognize  at  once  the  fact  that 
literature  is  not  an  object  of  study,  but  a  mode 
of  pleasure;  it  is  not  a  thing  to  be  known  merely 
like  science,  but  to  be  lived.  If  a  book  does 
not  yield  immediate  pleasure  to  the  reader,  as 
direct  and  intimate  as  sensation  or  emotion, 
it  fails  with  that  particular  person  to  discharge 
the  proper  function  of  literature.     The  typical 

14 


First  Principles 

example  of  the  operation  of  literature  is  found 
in  the  company  of  warriors  listening  to  the  old 
minstrel  who  relates  the  heroic  deeds  and  tragic 
histories  that  make  up  the  tradition  of  the 
tribe,  or  in  the  groups  in  the  mediaeval  market- 
place who  hung  on  the  lips  of  the  traveler  telling 
tales,  the  poet  chanting  lays,  or  the  players 
representing  in  rude  scenes  the  comedy  of 
human  life.  This  is  not  to  say  that  the  hearer 
is  without  some  preparation,  but  not  that  of 
study.  Even  the  simplest  books,  such  as  those 
about  nature,  require  that  there  should  have 
been  in  the  reader  some  previous  life,  some 
training  of  the  eye,  some  curiosity  about  birds 
and  beasts  and  the  treasure-trove  of  the  sea- 
beach.  The  having  lived  is  the  essential  con- 
dition of  any  appreciation;  or,  in  other  words, 
the  appeal  to  experience,  lies  back  of  all  literary 
pleasure.  The  more  direct  this  is,  the  better; 
and  literature  rises  in  the  scale  of  value  in  pro- 
portion as  the  appeal  is  made  to  broader  and 
wider  experience,  to  more  and  more  of  life 
already  realized  in  the  reader  himself.  His 
life  with  nature  must  be  wide  and  deep  before 
he  can  appreciate  normally  and  easily  the 
greater  works  of  poetic  imagination  in  which 

15 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

nature  is  employed  as  the  channel  of  high 
passion,  as  the  symbol  of  philosophic  truth,  or 
even  as  the  harmonious  and  enhancing  environ- 
ment of  scenes  of  love  or  tragedy.  That  reader 
does  best  who  in  his  use  of  literature  insists  on 
the  presence  of  this  immediate  appeal  to  himself 
in  the  books  he  reads.  If  the  book  does  not  have 
this  effect  with  him,  if  it  does  not  cooperate 
with  his  own  taste  and  interest,  it  may  be  the 
best  of  books  for  others,  but  it  is  not  for  him,  — 
at  least  it  is  not  yet  for  him.  Study,  the  con- 
scious preparation  to  understand,  begins  when 
the  difficulty  of  appreciation  becomes  insur- 
mountable by  private  and  personal  experience. 
The  obstacle  is,  in  the  main,  merely  a  defect 
in  experience  such  as  to  impair  his  powers  of 
imagination  and  sympathy  which  interpret  other 
lives  and  experience  not  his  own  to  himself. 
This  obstacle  rises  especially  in  past  literature 
and  it  increases  in  proportion  to  the  antiquity 
or  foreignness  of  the  literature,  in  general,  in 
the  degree  to  which  the  literature  involves  dif- 
ferent conditions  of  life  from  those  which  are 
contemporary.  It  is  here  that  scholarship  of  all 
sorts  has  its  function  in  the  endeavor  to  make 
contemporary  in  thought  the  past  phases  of  life. 

16 


First  Principles 

The  soul  is  essentially  the  same  in  all  men; 
yet  its  temperament,  its  consciousness  of  the 
world  and  of  itself,  its  faith  and  the  modes  of 
its  ambition  and  consolation  are  widely  different 
in  the  various  races  and  civilizations.  It  is 
extremely  difficult  even  for  a  trained  and  in- 
structed imagination  to  realize  the  world  of  a 
mediaeval  saint  or  of  a  Greek  sophist  or  of  a 
Jewish  enthusiast  of  the  age  of  the  prophets. 
If  one  attempts  to  reconstruct  the  physical 
aspect  of  such  a  man's  thought  of  the  heavens 
and  the  earth,  and  then  adds,  as  best  he  can, 
the  intellectual  and  moral  contents  of  such  a 
mind  and  heart,  he  seems  moving  in  a  world  of 
mistake  and  ignorance  so  different  from  our  own 
as  to  seem  a  mad  world.  It  is  curious  how  often 
the  past  world  of  our  own  blood,  its  scheme  of 
knowledge  and  scope  of  meditation  and  passion, 
take  on  this  form  of  apparent  madness  in  the 
eyes  of  a  modern  reader  who  stops  to  think. 
Still  more,  if  one  attempts  to  reconstruct  the 
world  of  the  Arab,  the  Hindoo,  the  Chinese,  the 
task  grows  hopeless;  looking  into  the  faces  of 
the  orientals,  eye  to  eye,  is  a  blanker  thing  than 
gazing  at  the  Sphinx;  the  mystery  of  personality 
seems  unfathomable  in  men  by  whom  funda- 

17 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

mental  ideas  are  so  differently  held  and  conceived 
as  often  to  be  unintelligible  to  us  and  hardly 
recognizable;  and  we  conclude  briefly, — "the 
oriental  is  inscrutable."  The  attempt  to  fathom 
a  foreign  literature  is  like  that  of  acquiring  the 
language;  at  first  it  seems  easy,  but  with  progress 
it  becomes  hard;  and  it  is  the  same,  but  in  an 
infinitely  greater  degree,  with  the  task  of  acquir- 
ing an  Italian  or  an  Arab  or  a  Hindoo  soul. 
The  defect  of  experience  in  our  case  allows  the 
imagination  to  work  only  imperfectly  in  con- 
structing, and  the  sympathies  to  flow  inade- 
quately in  interpreting,  the  scenes,  passions 
and  moods  of  other  lands  and  peoples;  and 
literature  loses  its  power  in  proportion  as  its 
necessary  appeal  to  ourselves  diminishes.  We 
read  Greek  books,  but  not  as  the  Greeks  read 
them;  and  one  of  the  strange  qualities  of  im- 
mortal books  is  that  they  permit  themselves  to 
be  so  read  and  yet  to  give  forth  an  intelligible 
and  supreme  meaning.  The  reader  takes  so 
much  of  the  book  as  has  affinity  with  him,  and 
it  is  as  if  the  book  were  re-written  in  his  mind; 
indeed,  it  often  happens  that  the  book  which 
was  written  is  not  the  book  which  is  read,  so 
great  is  the  reader's  share  in  that  blending  of 

18 


First  Principles 

two  souls  which  is  the  act  of  reading;  it  was 
certainly  thus,  for  example,  that  Emerson  read 
Hafiz.  The  reader's  mind  enters  into  every 
book,  but  especially  into  works  of  imagination; 
there  is  something  private  in  his  understanding 
of  his  author,  and  this  is  a  greater  element  in 
proportion  to  the  vitality  and  richness  of  his 
mind;  what  he  makes  of  an  ancient  or  a  foreign 
book  is  often,  it  must  be  suspected,  something 
that  departs  widely  from  the  original  author's 
design.  The  function  of  scholarship,  in  appre- 
ciation, is  so  to  inform  the  reader  with  respect 
to  the  material  and  environment  of  the  book 
that  he  may  have  the  truest  possible  operation 
of  imagination  and  the  freest  possible  play  of 
sympathy  in  appropriating  the  book;  but,  in 
comparison  with  contemporary  and  native  ap- 
preciation, it  is  usually  a  limited  success  which 
is  thus  gained. 

As  the  study  of  biography,  history,  archaeology 
and  other  lights  on  past  conditions  or  alien 
civilizations  are  aids  to  the  reader  in  understand- 
ing and  appropriating  unfamiliar  experience, 
so  some  study  of  artistic  forms  of  expression 
assists  him  in  appreciating  literature,  partic- 
ularly   in  its  higher  and  more  refined  phases. 

19 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

In  poetry,  especially,  a  modest  acquaintance 
with  the  melodic  modes  of  languages  is  indis- 
pensable; but  it  need  not  exceed  the  limits 
which  would  similarly  be  set  for  an  elementary 
appreciation  of  music.  It  is  not  a  knowledge 
of  prosody,  of  the  different  varieties  of  meter 
and  their  combinations,  of  the  technique  of 
verse  as  taught  in  books  that  is  necessary;  such 
study  is,  for  the  most  part,  wearisome  and 
fruitless.  The  essential  thing  is  to  be  able  to 
read  verse,  and  to  read  it  intelligently  so  that 
it  declares  itself  to  be  verse  and  not  prose  by 
the  mere  fall  of  the  syllables.  It  is  extraor- 
dinary how  rare  this  power  has  become.  It  is 
true  that  in  older  modes  of  education,  such  as 
the  Greek,  the  melodic  modes  of  the  language 
were  defined  and  held  by  the  concurrence  of 
the  instrument  and  the  dance  with  the  choral 
movement  of  the  words;  but  verse,  even  when 
not  so  sustained,  has  a  clear  movement  of  its 
own.  The  ear  should  be  trained  by  the  oral 
repetition  of  verse,  if  it  is  to  be  true;  but  this  is 
seldom  done  in  any  effective  way.  It  is  not  only 
the  keen  sense  of  the  melody  of  verse  which 
has  been  lost;  the  significance  of  the  line  and  the 
phrase  as  units  of  composition  is  also  seldom 

20 


First  Principles 

known.  It  is  not  possible  to  appreciate  verse 
unless  it  is  correctly  read,  nor  to  realize  its 
beauty  without  some  sense  of  its  structure,  that 
is,  of  the  unitary  value  of  phrase,  line,  and 
stanza,  and  of  the  mode  of  their  combination  to 
build  up  the  whole  into  one  poem.  To  per- 
ceive melodic  time  in  verse  with  its  subtle 
modulation  of  cadence  and  rhythm,  and  to  be 
aware  of  the  interlacing  and  close  junction  of 
phrase  and  line  in  which  much  of  the  grace  and 
felicity  of  poetry  resides,  are  labors  neither 
difficult  nor  long;  a  little  intelligent  attention 
suffices  to  acquire  this  power  and  with  it  the 
formal  pleasure  of  literature  begins.  The  way 
once  entered  on  may  lead  so  far  as  to  the  appre- 
ciation of  a  Greek  ode  or  even  to  pleasure  in  the 
intricacies  of  a  Persian  song.  It  is  not,  how- 
ever, necessary  to  go  to  such  lengths.  The 
forms  of  poetry  have  their  effect,  like  the  forms 
of  other  arts,  without  elaborate  study  or  de- 
veloped knowledge  of  technique.  Oratory  is  a 
mode  of  address  full  of  artifice,  but  it  is  artifice 
grounded  upon  nature,  so  that  it  sways  the 
"fierce  democratic"  by  itself;  and  the  forms  of 
poetry  are  similarly  grounded  upon  nature,  and 
its  music  plays  upon  the  heart  and  mind  of  men 

21 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

by  a  necessity  of  their  constitution.  A  scientific 
and  technical  knowledge  is  by  no  means  re- 
quired of  the  reader;  but  an  elementary  acquaint- 
ance with  melody  and  structure,  such  as  to  allow 
correct  reading  and  the  perception  of  the  har- 
monious confinement  of  thought  within  the  limits 
of  the  musical  beats  of  phrase  and  line,  is  hardly 
to  be  dispensed  with.  It  is  questionable,  on  the 
other  hand,  whether  much  is  gained  by  study 
of  the  artistic  field  in  larger  matters,  such  as, 
for  example,  dramatic  construction.  In  that 
direction  the  reader  turns  his  attention  from  the 
work  to  the  workmanship,  and  may  embarrass 
himself  with  theory,  or  preconceptions  not 
universally  applicable.  But  without  setting 
limits  to  study  of  whatever  sort,  for  all  modes 
of  study  have  possible  uses,  it  is  to  be  laid  down 
in  general  that  all  study  of  literature  in  the  way 
of  preparation  to  grasp  and  understand,  whether 
it  be  linguistic,  historical  or  aesthetic,  exists  to 
be  forgotten  and  laid  off  as  soon  as  it  is  com- 
pleted; its  end  is  to  withdraw  one  by  one  the 
veils,  and  leave  the  reader  alone  with  the  spirit 
of  the  book,  which  then  speaks  to  him  face  to 
face.  All  the  rest  was  but  preliminary;  it  is 
only  then  that  he  begins  to  read. 

22 


First  Principles 

The  uses  of  study  in  all  its  kinds  being  thus 
subsidiary  and  a  means  of  remedying  defects 
in  the  power  of  imagination,  sympathy  and 
perception  of  form,  the  reader  is  at  last  thrown 
fairly  back  upon  his  own  experience,  or  the  kind 
and  quality  of  the  life  he  has  lived,  for  his 
appreciation  of  literature;  he  is  left  to  himself. 
If  the  light  is  not  in  him,  he  cannot  see;  and, 
in  general,  large  parts  of  literature  remain  dark 
and,  even  in  authors  whom  he  comprehends 
in  the  main  portions,  continue  obscure.  This 
is  especially  true  of  the  greatest  works  of  genius. 
For  the  reader  the  measure  of  his  understand- 
ing of  the  author  is  the  measure  of  the  author; 
and  from  this  there  is  no  appeal.  It  results 
from  these  conditions  that  literature  is  slowly 
appropriated  and  is  a  thing  of  growth.  The 
reader  cannot  transcend  at  the  moment  his 
own  season;  as  a  child  he  reads  as  a  child,  and 
as  a  man  as  a  man.  A  boy  of  ten  may  read 
Homer,  but  he  reads  him  with  the  power  of 
a  boy  of  ten.  It  is  a  child's  Homer.  The 
dependence  of  the  book  on  the  reader  being 
so  strict,  it  is  always  advisable  to  keep  literary 
study  on  a  near  level  with  life  as  it  is  in  the 
individual   case.     The   natural   introduction  to 

23 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

literature  for  the  very  young  is  by  means  of 
that  universal  sort  which  is  selected  from  all 
ages  and  requires  no  study,  such  as  the  stories 
of  Scripture,  short  legendary  tales  of  history, 
beast  and  bird  fables,  fairy  tales  and  the  like. 
They  have,  besides  their  intelligibility,  the 
advantage  of  accustoming  the  mind  to  a  make- 
believe  world,  natural  to  childish  fancy,  and  so 
laying  the  foundation  for  that  principle  of  con- 
vention which  is  fundamental  in  art  and  in- 
dispensable in  its  practise,  and  also  of  making 
the  contemplation  of  imaginary  experience 
habitual  so  that  there  is  no  shock  between  it 
and  truth.  The  transposition  by  which  human 
experience  is  placed  in  the  bird  and  beast 
world  is  a  literary  fiction;  as  an  element  in  early 
education  it  helps  to  give  that  plasticity  to  the 
world  of  fact  which  is  essential  to  the  artistic 
interpretation  of  life  and  the  imaginary  habit 
of  mind.  The  serious  study  of  one's  own  litera- 
ture is  most  fruitfully  begun  by  acquaintance 
with  those  authors  who  are  in  vogue  and  nearly 
contemporary,  the  literature  of  the  century 
preceding,  on  the  well-worn  principle  of  pro- 
ceeding in  knowledge  from  the  better-known 
to  less    well-known,   and    because  there  is  the 

24 


First  Principles 

minimum  of  necessary  study  intervening  between 
author  and  reader.  To  approach  and  have 
practise  in  the  literature  that  requires  study 
there  is  nothing  better  for  the  beginner  than 
Greek  literature,  and  it  has  the  peculiar  advan- 
tage for  broadening  the  mind  of  being  a  pagan 
literature  and  yet  closely  kindred  to  our  own, 
presenting  human  experience  under  very  dif- 
ferent conditions  from  the  present,  and  yet 
easily  realizable  in  wise  and  beautiful  forms. 
In  Greek  literature,  too,  the  universal  element 
is  greater  than  in  any  other,  and  this  facilitates 
its  comprehension  while  the  mind  becomes 
accustomed  to  the  mixture  with  the  universal 
of  the  past,  the  temporal,  the  racial,  the  obscure, 
the  dead.  It  is  advisable,  also,  in  these  early 
choices  and  initial  steps  to  consider  the  season 
of  the  reader,  to  begin  with  books  in  which 
action  has  a  large  share  and  postpone  those  in 
which  thought  is  dominant,  to  favor  those  of 
simple  rather  than  of  refined  emotion,  to  keep 
in  all  things  near  to  the  time  of  life  and  to  that 
experience  especially  which  is  nascent  if  not 
already  arrived  in  the  reader.  And  what  is 
true  of  the  beginner  is  true  for  every  later 
period.     It  is  best  to  be  honest  with  oneself, 

25 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

and  to  respect  one's  own  tastes  and  predilections; 
not  to  read  books  because  thev  are  classics,  if 
they  yield  no  true  pleasure,  not  to  force  a  tame 
liking,  not  to  feign  to  oneself,  or  in  other  ways 
to  confuse  what  it  is  said  one  ought  to  like  with 
what  one  does  like  sincerely.  It  is  always  to 
be  borne  in  mind  that  appreciation  is  a  thing  of 
growth.  A  great  book  does  not  give  itself  all 
at  once,  nor  perhaps  quickly,  but  the  maxim 
holds  good,  —  slow  love  is  long  love.  Books 
naturally  fall  into  three  classes:  those  that  are 
outlived,  because  the  experience  they  contain 
and  address  is  shallow  or  transitory;  those  that 
are  arrived  at  late  because  the  experience  in- 
volved is  mature;  and  those,  the  greatest,  which 
give  something  to  the  youngest  and  have  some- 
thing left  to  give  to  the  oldest,  which  keep  pace 
with  life  itself  and  like  life  disclose  themselves 
more  profoundly,  intimately  and  in  expanding 
values  with  familiarity.  The  secret  of  appre- 
ciation is  to  share  the  passion  for  life  that  litera- 
ture itself  exemplifies  and  contains;  out  of  real 
experience,  the  best  that  one  can  have,  to 
possess  oneself  of  that  imaginary  experience 
which  is  the  stuff  of  larger  life  and  the  place 
of  the  ideal  expansion  of  the  soul,  the  gateway 

26 


First  Principles 

to  which  is  art  in  all  forms  and  primarily  litera- 
ture; to  avail  oneself  of  that  for  pleasure  and 
wisdom  and  fulness  of  life.  It  is  those  minds 
which  are  thus  experienced  that  alone  come  to 
be  on  the  level  of  the  greatest  works  and  to 
absorb  their  life;  but  the  way  is  by  a  gradual 
ascent,  by  natural  growth,  by  maintaining  a 
vital  relation  with  what  is  read.  So  long  as 
the  bond  between  author  and  reader  is  a  living 
bond,  appreciation  is  secure. 


27 


CHAPTER  II 

LYRICAL   POETRY 

THE  lyric  is  primarily  the  expression  of 
emotion.  In  the  beginning  emotion  was 
expressed  by  inarticulate  cries,  of  which  the 
developed  artistic  form  in  civilization  is  pure 
music.  It  was  originally  accompanied  by  the 
dance,  and  the  literary  element  appears  to  have 
entered  first  as  a  short  chanted  phrase  in  mo- 
notonous repetition.  In  the  evolution  of  civil- 
ization these  several  elements  have  given  rise 
to  different  arts,  and  the  lyric  now  stands  by 
itself  as  the  expression  of  emotion  by  words, 
apart  from  the  dance  or  music  in  the  strict  sense. 
It  remains  true,  however,  that  the  substance  of 
the  lyric,  the  essential  experience  which  it  con- 
tains, is  the  emotion,  and  not  the  image  set 
forth  in  words  which  indeed  exists  only  to  sug- 
gest or  discharge  the  emotion.  This  is  a  funda- 
mental consideration.  The  emotion  is  seen 
throbbing  as  it  were  in  the  image,  as  you  may 

28 


Keats 


Lyrical    Poetry 

see  a  bird's  throat  throb  with  its  song;  what  you 
see  is  the  outward  color  and  movement;  what 
you  hear  is  the  song,  that  emotion  which  in  itself 
is  imageless,  a  thing  felt,  not  beheld.  The  sub- 
stance of  meaning  in  the  poem  is  the  emotion 
roused  by  the  suggestion  of  the  image;  and 
however  personal  the  lyric  may  be,  it  is  univer- 
salized and  made  good  for  all  men  by  the  emo- 
tion which  is  the  same  in  human  nature.  Lyrics, 
strictly  speaking,  are  symbols  of  universal  emo- 
tion which  is  conveyed  or  roused  by  the  imagery. 
Emotion  is  constant  in  life.  It  is  a  thing  of 
unrest;  it  rises,  grows,  and  passes  away;  but  it 
comes  again  and  again.  Life  is  full  of  these 
vague  waves;  and  perhaps  one  reason  why  lyric 
poetry  holds  so  leading  a  place  in  literature,  and 
is  the  quickest  and  surest  appeal  of  the  poets, 
is  because  it  furnishes  definite  form,  in  these 
symbols  of  universal  emotion,  for  the  concen- 
tration and  expression,  under  the  intellectual 
form  of  an  image,  of  that  vague  feeling  that 
finds  its  emotional  form  most  surely  in  music. 
The  lyric  defines  and  releases  this  vague  emotion 
which  is  forever  arising  in  experience;  this  is 
its  function,  its  ground  of  being  in  art,  its  use 
to  the  world.     It  gives  feeling  a  career  in  life, 

29 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

and  finds  for  it  temporary  assuagement  and 
repose.  It  belongs  to  the  universality  of  emo- 
tion that  the  imagery  of  lyric  poetry  has  such 
elements  of  permanence.  It  is  sometimes  made 
a  reproach  to  poets  that  they  use  this  ancient 
and  conventional  imagery;  but  the  nightingale 
and  the  rose,  the  serenade,  the  enclosed  garden, 
the  Eden-isle  are  images  and  situations  charged 
with  the  associations  of  long  use;  they  are,  in 
fact,  a  ritual  of  love-service,  and  possess  a 
ceremonial  beauty  and  solemnity;  they  are  parts 
of  ancient  poetic  worship.  They  are  like  a  fixed 
musical  scale  on  which  the  emotion,  which  is 
the  imageless  burden  of  song,  rises  and  falls. 

If  the  reader  be  somewhat  mature  and  accus- 
tomed to  poetry,  the  best  general  view  of  the 
nature  and  the  use  of  lyric  verse,  its  range  and 
power,  is  to  be  found  in  the  Greek  Anthology 
which  is  open  for  English  readers  most  profitably 
in  MacKail's  volume  of  selections  and  there 
accompanied  by  a  remarkable  essay,  interpreting 
the  verse  and  bringing  it  home  as  the  music  of 
Greek  life  and  of  the  universal  heart  at  one  and 
the  same  time.  To  be  familiar  with  the  Greek 
AntJwlogy  is  to  know  well-nigh  the  whole  com- 
pass of  human  emotion  with  regard  to  earthly 

30 


Lyrical  Poetry 

things  in  forms  of  expression  unrivaled  for 
clarity,  grace,  beauty,  and  for  the  wisdom  of  life. 
This  book  is  the  great  monument  of  the  lyric, 
and  stands  sole  and  apart.  But  to  appreciate 
a  work  so  foreign  to  our  contemporary  culture 
requires  a  high  degree  of  cultivation;  on  the 
principles  already  laid  down,  the  beginning  of 
appreciation  of  lyric  verse  is  rather  to  be  made 
in  one's  own  language  and  in  poets  nigh  to  our 
own  times.  Palgrave's  Golden  Treasury  is  still 
the  book  preferred  as  a  collection  of  English 
lyrics ;  but  even  in  that,  indispensable  as  it  is  to 
the  daily  lover  of  English  verse,  the  beginner 
is  forced  to  pick  and  choose  and  to  reject. 
It  is  best  to  begin  with  Scott's  lyrics  of  gallant 
romance  with  their  warmth  of  color  and  out- 
of-door  freshness,  or  war  lyrics  like  Campbell's 
with  their  quick  flash,  their  humble  and  plain 
pathos,  and  the  thunderous  sound  of  battle 
gone  into  the  verse;  or,  perhaps  best  of  all  with 
Burns,  because  there  are  so  many  of  his  poems, 
and  the  spirit  of  the  lyric  is  there  the  master 
of  many  revels.  Burns  has  the  advantage  for 
beginners,  who  find  it  hard  to  free  their  minds 
from  the  suspicion  of  effeminacy  in  poetry,  of 
always  making  a  profoundly  masculine  impres- 

31 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

sion.  Like  Scott  and  Byron  he  is  distinctly  a 
man's  poet,  and  he  is  more  accessible,  more 
various  and  especially  more  intimate  than  they 
are  in  the  appeal  he  makes  to  the  nascent 
passion,  thoughts  and  affections  of  life;  and 
the  experience  he  brings,  though  set  to  melody 
and  rhymes,  is  untransformed  and  genuine,  and 
keeps  near  to  earth,  to  things  common  and 
obvious,  and  to  the  comrade  side  of  life  both 
for  wisdom  and  abandon.  Wordsworth  is  in 
important  ways  a  companion  spirit  to  Burns, 
and  Coleridge  on  certain  sides  neighbors  Scott, 
though  with  profound  differences.  Keats  and 
Shelley  each  require  a  certain  likeness  of  tem- 
perament in  the  reader,  while  Byron  makes  a 
less  subtle  appeal.  The  personal,  national  and 
universal  elements  in  these  poets  are  easily 
discriminated,  and  their  works  may  readily  be 
related,  by  the  reader  who  is  intent  on  study 
and  a  knowledge  of  the  historic  course  of  litera- 
ture, to  the  democratic  movement  of  the  time, 
to  the  ballad  revival  and  the  Hellenic  renascence, 
to  the  Revolution,  and  in  general  to  all  the 
literary  and  social  phenomena  of  that  age  of 
romanticism.  But  this  belongs  to  the  history  of 
literature  and  is  a  secondary  matter.     It  may 

32 


Lyrical  Poetry 

be  accepted  without  hesitation  that  a  reader 
who  has  familiarized  himself  with  and  truly 
appropriated  this  group  of  poets  is  well  pre- 
pared to  appreciate  lyric  poetry  in  any  field. 

How  to  read  the  poets  is,  nevertheless,  an 
art  to  be  learned,  and  into  it  much  tact  enters  if 
there  be  not  in  the  reader  a  native  and  self-dis- 
covered susceptibility  to  literary  pleasure.  In 
the  initial  steps  the  end  should  be  to  make  this 
discovery,  to  experiment  with  various  authors 
in  search  of  those  to  whose  books  the  tempera- 
ment and  experience  of  the  reader  respond  with 
spontaneity.  There  should  consequently  be 
great  latitude  of  neglect  and  a  free  exercise  of  it, 
and  the  field  of  literature  is  so  large  and  various 
that  there  is  no  reason  to  fear  any  essential  loss. 
All  books  are  not  for  all  minds;  it  is  a  question 
of  the  right  minds  finding  the  right  books  by  a 
process  of  natural  affinity.  In  early  years  there 
is,  however,  a  counterbalancing  truth.  A  large 
proportion  of  patience  is  also  necessary  in  order 
that  a  book  may  have  a  fair  chance  to  win  a 
hearing;  and  in  serious  study  the  various  phases 
of  interest  in  an  author  should  be  closely  re- 
garded. As  in  trained  observation  the  eye  is 
taught  to  see  by  having  its  attention  directed 

33 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

to  many  points  of  the  object  and  acquires 
modes  and  habits  of  seeing,  the  mind  must  be 
led  to  look  in  various  directions  and  acquire 
habits  of  conduct  in  reading.  Often  the  young 
reader  does  not  know  what  to  look  for  in  a  book, 
as  he  would  not  know  what  to  look  for  in  a 
stone  or  a  flower  without  some  geological  or 
botanical  hint.  It  is  at  this  stage  that  patience 
is  most  needed  and  the  habit  of  expectant  and 
discursive  interest.  This  is  the  time  of  experi- 
ment when  the  mind  is  finding  itself,  and  is 
often  surprised  into  self -disco  very  by  accident. 
It  is  thus  that  the  chance  encounter  with  a  book 
has  frequently  marked  the  awakening  of  a  life. 
It  is  therefore  desirable  to  open  the  phases  of 
an  author  fully,  and  to  relate  his  work  in  divers 
ways  to  the  intelligence  and  sympathy  in  search 
of  some  response,  and  in  general  to  proceed  from 
the  simpler  to  the  more  complex  and  subtle, 
from  reality  and  action  to  imagination  and 
passion,  and  so  on  to  thought  and  wisdom 
that  are  grounded  on  the  experience  depicted. 
Perhaps  an  example  may  be  useful,  given 
with  some  degree  of  detail.  Let  the  case  be 
Burns.  A  condensed  guide  for  reading  his 
verse  would  run  somewhat  as  follows.     It  would 

34 


Lyrical  Poetry 

be  noticed  first  that  he  was  familiar  with  ani- 
mals, cared  for  them,  handled  them,  and  loved 
them  in  their  degree.  He  thinks  of  them 
realistically  as  suffering  brutes  with  a  prevailing 
environment  of  hardship  and  sympathizes  with 
them  as  a  part  of  farm  life.  To  a  Mouse  and 
A  Winter  Night  are  examples.  Similarly,  To  a 
Mountain  Daisy  presents  flowers  under  the 
same  aspect  of  misfortune.  In  both  cases  a 
moral  is  added,  giving  a  decided  human  in- 
terest to  the  mere  natural  objects,  as  if  the 
mind  could  not  rest  in  them,  but  finds  only 
man  finally  interesting  to  man  according  to 
the  old  Greek  maxim.  The  animal  life  mixes 
with  man's  life  actually  in  The  Auld  Farmer 
to  his  Auld  Mare,  and  needs  no  moralizing:  in 
The  Death  and  Dying  Words  of  Poor  Mailie, 
the  poet  takes  the  animal's  point  of  view.  In 
The  Twa  Dogs  while  the  dog  character  is  realis- 
tic the  meaning  is  wholly  human;  it  is  a  poem 
of  human  life.  The  landscape,  nature  in  its 
moods,  is  seen  characteristically  in  broad  sweeps 
and  described  barely,  with  no  elaboration,  and 
is  predominantly  sad,  wintry,  or  pathetic.  The 
external  life  is  Adam's  world,  a  world  under  a 
curse  of  pain,  toil  or  fear;  it  is  the  primitive  rude 

35 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

farm  world.  Thomson's  Winter  has  this  same 
atmosphere.  The  landscape,  however,  is  inci- 
dental and  used  as  a  background  for  human  life 
or  for  sentiment,  from  which  it  takes  emotional 
beauty  —  a  beauty  reflected  from  the  human  feel- 
ing, joyful  or  sad  as  that  is  happy  or  troubled; 
and  often  the  landscape  thus  seems  to  give  tone  to 
the  poem  while  in  fact  it  is  only  the  halo  round 
the  poem.  The  moods  in  which  the  non- 
human  elements  in  the  verse  are  presented, 
whether  these  are  animal  or  inanimate,  are 
pathos,  humor,  and  sentiment,  and  rarely  awe 
also  in  passages  of  pure  description.  One 
should  note  especially  the  bare  detail  of  fact, 
well  selected,  and  in  treatment  the  speed  and 
vigor,  the  quick  realization  to  the  eye  or  heart, 
the  immediacy  of  the  wit,  humor,  or  sense. 

Tlie  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  is  Burns'  most 
generally  acceptable  poem.  It  is  said  to  be 
impaired  as  poetry  by  its  Englishry,  or  literary 
tradition  in  style  and  diction  coming  from 
classic  English  verse.  Burns'  religious  feeling 
was  very  deep  down  under  the  surface  of  his 
days  and  weeks,  and  here  is  shown  by  his 
appreciation  of  the  types  in  which  he  had 
respected    piety    in    his    parents.     Those    who 

36 


Lyrical  Poetry 

censure  the  poem  for  its  imperfect  art  are  apply- 
ing academic  criticism,  of  which  the  mark  is 
that  it  attends  to  art  more  than  to  substance, 
to  little  purpose:  they  lose  that  grip  on  life 
which  keeps  such  criticism  within  bounds  of 
good  sense;  the  poem,  whatever  its  faults,  is  an 
imperishable  monument  of  that  home-feeling, 
shown  also  in  Goldsmith's  Deserted  Village  and 
Whittier's  Snow-Bound,  which  is  so  profound 
an  element  in  the  character  as  well  as  the  affec- 
tions of  English-speaking  people  the  world 
over;  the  Christian  home,  whether  Scotch,  Irish 
or  American,  is  the  same  substantially,  and 
shines  the  more  the  more  humble  the  home; 
the  poem  presents  this,  and  remains,  as  it  should 
be,  more  domestic  than  religious.  After  this 
The  Vision  should  be  read,  the  scene  being  the 
same,  and  the  subject  being  what  was  more  to 
Burns  than  religion,  —  his  call  to  the  poet's 
life.  Opposed  to  these  purer  scenes  of  his  own 
home  in  its  noblest  associations  stand  the 
satiric  poems  on  the  church  and  its  congrega- 
tion. There  has  never  been  so  exposing  and 
self -justifying  satire  in  English;  as  a  portrayal 
of  manners  and  as  a  moral  argument  they  are 
equally    complete.     The    series    includes     The 

37 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

Twa  Herds,  The  Holy  Fairy  The  Ordination, 
Holy  Willie' s  Prayer,  The  Kirk's  Alarm,  Ad- 
dress to  the  Deil,  Address  to  the  Unco*  Guid,  To 
the  Rev.  John  ATMath;  and  with  these  should 
be  read  the  Epistle  to  a  Young  Friend,  A  Bard's 
Epitaph,  Epistle  to  James  Smith,  Epistle  to 
Davie,  Epistle  to  J.  Lapraik,  Second  Epistle 
to  J.  Lapraik,  Epistle  to  William  Simpson, 
which  sufficiently  illustrate  Burns'  personal 
moods,  both  as  poet  and  man.  The  character 
drawing,  the  general  social  scene,  the  argument, 
the  observation  of  life  and  reflection  upon  it 
are  all  easy  to  take  in.  These  are  all  pure 
Scotch  pieces  and  come  out  of  the  core  of  Burns' 
life.  Tarn  O'Shanter  should  be  read  as  narra- 
tive; but  observe  its  vivid  vision,  speed  and  the 
variety  of  feelings  excited  by  it  as  one  reads. 
It  is  hardly  excelled,  except  that  its  subject  is 
slighter,  by  The  Jolly  Beggars,  which  is  the 
masterpiece  of  the  pure  Scotch  poems;  notable 
in  this  poem  is  the  absence  of  any  moral  attitude 
toward  its  matter,  the  shameless  unconscious- 
ness of  it,  as  of  the  beggars  themselves,  which 
must  be  reckoned  an  artistic  triumph.  Observe 
also  its  structure,  and  the  union  in  it  of  Burns' 
two    great    powers  —  the   song-power    and    the 

38 


Lyrical  Poetry 

manners-drawing  power,  which  give  to  it  the 
force  of  all  his  capacity  as  a  writer,  except  as  a 
love-poet.  The  best  of  the  pure  Scotch  poems, 
not  already  mentioned,  are  Halloween,  Scotch 
Drink,  Poor  Mailie's  Elegy,  To  a  Louse,  Epistle 
to  John  Rankine,  Death  and  Doctor  Hornbook, 
A  Poet's  Welcome,  Adam  Armour's  Prayer, 
Nature's  Law,  and  the  Epistles. 

The  best  songs  are  those  of  mingled  imagina- 
tion and  passion  with  a  personal  touch,  such  as 
Highland  Mary,  Thou  lingering  star,  Of  a'  the 
airts,  Ae  fond  kiss,  Mary  M orison,  0  wert  thou 
in  the  cauld  blast,  Here's  a  health;  those  of  the 
same  sort  but  more  impersonal,  such  as  How 
lang  and  drearie,  The  Banks  of  Doon,  A  red, 
red  rose,  Coming  through  the  rye,  Saw  ye  bonie 
Lesley,  O  this  is  no  my  ain  lassie,  My  Nanie,  0; 
those  of  universal  appeal  (not  love-songs),  such 
as  John  Anderson,  Auld  Lang  Syne,  Scots  wha 
hae,  Is  there  for  honest  poverty;  those  of  a  lighter, 
careless  cast,  such  as  0  Whistle,  Fm  o'er  young, 
Duncan  Davison,  Duncan  Gray,  Laddie,  lie 
near  me,  Whistle  o'er  the  lave  of  it,  The  Rantin 
Dog,  0  May,  thy  morn,  Corn  Rigs,  Green  grow 
the  rashes;  those  touched  (but  hardly  touched) 
with   romance,   such   as   M'Pherson's  Farewell, 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

The  Silver  Tassie,  My  heart's  in  the  highlands , 
It  was  a'  for  our  right ju*  king;  the  drinking  songs, 
such  as  Willie  brew'd  a  peck  o'  maut,  and  others 
of  like  rollicking  or  mocking  nature.  These 
titles  include  nearly  all  the  best  lyrics,  the 
characteristic  and  famous  ones.  Their  qualities 
are  too  simple  to  require  further  remark.  Notice 
the  unity  of  each,  its  being  all  of  a  piece,  in  one 
tone  of  feeling;  the  atmosphere  of  landscape  or 
of  incident  in  some;  the  temperament  prevailing 
in  each,  pathos,  humor,  raillery,  gallantry,  sen- 
timent, all  of  a  popular  and  common  kind;  the 
music  sharing  the  spirit  of  each;  and  the  simple 
directness  of  speech,  just  like  natural  quick 
prose,  only  conveying  images  and  feelings  as  a 
rule,  or  if  ideas,  then  ideas  that  glow  with 
emotion;  and  especially  notice  the  complete 
success  of  each  in  what  it  tries  to  do. 

It  is  with  some  such  counsel  as  this,  however 
obtained,  that  the  reader  who  is  beginning 
acquaintance  with  English  lyric  poetry  in  the 
group  named  should  be  attended;  or,  if  this  be 
lacking,  it  is  by  such  attention  to  many  sides  of 
his  author  that  he  should  endeavor  to  open  his 
eyes  and  to  multiply  his  points  of  contact.  A 
connection  is  to  be  made  between  life  in   the 

40 


Lyrical  Poetry 

author  and  life  in  himself;  the  points  of 
power  in  the  one  and  the  points  of  sensitiveness 
in  the  other  must  mutually  find  each  other.  It 
is  only  then  that  appreciation  begins. 

One  of  the  liveliest  pleasures  of  literary  study 
in  its  inception  is  this  rapid  multiplication  of 
the  interest  of  life;  to  become  aware  of  the 
variety  of  the  surface  of  life,  to  enter  beneath  the 
surfaces,  to  penetrate  them  and  realize  their 
significance.  Among  these  new  interests  some 
special  attention  should  be  given  to  the  artistic 
forms  of  the  expression,  to  its  modes  of  handling 
the  theme,  even  so  far  as  to  make  a  slight 
analysis,  if  only  to  bring  them  more  fully  into 
clear  consciousness.  The  forms  of  art  are  then 
seen  to  be  not  something  arbitrary,  but  replicas 
of  life  itself.  The  play  of  emotion  in  the  poet 
is  not  something  artificial,  nor  idiosyncratic  and 
peculiar  to  himself ;  in  him  as  in  others  it  follows 
the  ordinary  process  of  experience;  but  by  his 
art  he  exhibits  this  play  in  forms  of  greater 
clarity,  brilliance  and  beauty.  For  the  purposes 
of  brief  illustration  it  will  be  sufficient  to  refer 
to  well-known  lyrics  and  to  confine  attention 
to  those  in  which  nature  gives  the  base  of  the 
imagery    by    means    of   which    the    emotion    is 

41 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

rendered.  In  Shelley's  lines  The  Recollection 
there  is  a  clear-cut  example  of  the  way  in  which 
a  natural  scene  is  handled  to  develop  the  climax 
of  an  emotional  moment.  In  the  first  move- 
ment of  the  poem  the  landscape  fills  the  entire 
field  of  interest  as  mere  description,  and  is  so 
rendered  as  to  build  up  an  atmosphere  of  soli- 
tude, silence  and  quiet  peace  with  increasing 
effect,  but  without  human  suggestion,  until  the 
scene  becomes  intense  and  magnetic,  and  the 
mood  reaches  its  height: 

"There  seemed,  from  the  remotest  seat 

Of  the  white  mountain  waste 
To  the  soft  flower  beneath  our  feet, 

A  magic  circle  traced, 
A  spirit  interfused  around, 

A  thrilling,  silent  life, — 
To  momentary  peace  it  bound 

Our  mortal  nature's  strife; 
And  still  I  felt  the  center  of 

The  magic  circle  there 
Was  one  fair  form  that  filled  with  love 

The  lifeless  atmosphere." 

The  mood  arising  out  of  these  natural  surround- 
ings has  so  moved  as  to  concentrate  the  whole 
living  world  on  the  figure  of  the  lady  suddenly 
disclosed,  and  to  center  the  emotion  of  the 
scene  in  her   presence   so   that   she  seems  the 

42 


Lyrical  Poetry 

source  of  all  life  that  lives  there.  The  climax 
of  the  natural  scene  in  the  feminine  form  is  com- 
plete; the  scene,  in  fact,  radiates  from  her. 
In  Shelley's  verse  of  this  kind  the  emotion  which 
rises  out  of  nature  often  returns  to  nature  to  find 
there  its  cessation  and  repose,  and  the  cycle  is 
then  complete  and  parallels  normal  experience. 
In  the  Stanzas  Written  in  Dejection  near  Naples 
the  example  is  very  perfect,  and  it  should  be 
observed  how  definitely  the  successive  stages 
of  the  mood,  as  it  disengages  itself  from  the 
scene  and  becomes  purely  personal  and  human, 
are  held  each  within  the  limits  of  the  stanza,  and 
how  the  orderly  development  of  the  mood  as  it 
rises  and  falls  away  is  accomplished  by  means  of 
the  stanzaic  structure.  The  variations  of  the 
artistic  process  are  infinite.  In  Keats'  Ode  to  a 
Nightingale  the  more  common  order  is  reversed ; 
the  poem  begins  with  emotion  already  present 
and  seeks  union  with  nature  as  an  end  in  itself; 
the  soul,  being  already  in  a  certain  mood,  seeks 
expression  by  union  with  the  nightingale's  song, 
seeks  self-expression  there,  and  when  the  song 
ceases  the  soul  returns  to  itself  and  awakes 
from  its  dream.  The  contrast  with  the  Stanzas 
near  Naples  is  complete.     Whereas  in  Shelley's 

43 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

poem  nature  is  real  and  the  emotion  is  the 
emerging  dream  from  which  the  soul  awakes 
returning  to  nature,  in  Keats'  ode  the  emotion 
is  real,  and  nature  the  dream  from  which  the 
soul  awakes  returning  to  itself.  Another  in- 
teresting example,  artistically,  is  Shelley's  Indian 
Serenade.  Here  the  poem  has  a  prelude  in  the 
dream  world  itself  from  which  the  lover  awakes 
into  a  natural  world  that  has  all  the  charac- 
teristics of  a  dream,  and  thence  beginning  its 
emotional  career,  drops  the  night-scene  and 
nature  completely  out  of  sight  and  lives  only  in 
the  world  of  its  own  passionate  desire. 

Such  are  some  of  the  examples  of  the  nature 
lyric  of  the  most  poetic  type.  Less  unified, 
but  not  less  interesting,  are  those  forms  that 
employ  the  method  of  parallelism  instead  of 
evolution  and  set  the  natural  scene  beside  the 
mind's  thought,  without  losing  it  from  view  in 
the  intense  oblivion  of  emotion.  Wordsworth's 
Lines  Writte7i  in  Early  Spring  follows  this 
method,  and  Tennyson's  Break,  break,  break, 
is  perhaps  the  finest  example  of  it,  setting  forth 
the  opposition  of  life  continuing  in  all  its  activi- 
ties in  antithesis  to  the  fact  of  death  and  per- 
sonal  loss.     The   same   method   and   situation, 

44 


Lyrical  Poetry 

but  with  a  closer  union  of  the  scene  with  the 
sense  of  lost  love,  are  in  Burns'  Bonnie  Doon. 
Still  another  variety  of  the  type,  and  one  widely 
used,  is  the  method  of  expanding  the  emotion 
by  a  rising  enlargement  of  the  imagery,  seen 
in  Burns'  My  luve's  like  a  red,  red  rose;  the  pas- 
sage from  the  symbol  of  the  fresh-sprung  rose 
and  the  simple  tune  to  the  vast  imagery  of  the 
seas,  and  the  earth's  destruction,  and  distance 
to  the  world's  end,  is  simply  made,  and  by  this 
speed  with  its  splendid  abandon  the  immensity 
of  the  poet's  love  is  rendered.  A  curious  in- 
stance of  mingled  parallelism  between  the  natural 
scene  and  the  emotional  mood,  with  expansion 
through  the  imagery,  is  found  in  Tennyson's 
Tears,  idle  tears;  there  is  in  this  poem  a  rever- 
beration of  emotion,  as  in  instrumental  music, 
and  this  reverberation  is  really  the  poem,  as 
may  be  known  by  the  use  of  the  refrain.  The 
function  of  the  refrain  in  verse  is  precisely  to 
secure  this  reverberation  of  one  chord  of  the 
mood  continually  rising  up  and  dying,  and 
rising  again  and  dying  away,  so  that  the  emotion 
rather  than  any  particular  image  of  the  emotion 
shall  fill  the  mind;  for  such  poems,  in  which, 
moreover,   the    mere    monotony    of    repetition 

45 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

deadens  and  hypnotizes  the  intellectual  con- 
sciousness, are  like  music,  —  though  floating 
images  may  attend  the  emotion  they  are  sub- 
ordinate to  it;  emotion,  imageless  emotion,  is  the 
end  sought. 

It  will  be  observed  that  in  the  larger  number 
of  these  examples  the  effect  is  one  of  sadness, 
and  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  sadness  pre- 
vails in  the  lyric  and  in  the  lyrical  temperament. 
Victorious  emotion  is  sometimes  the  subject; 
but  emotion  is  more  often  fruitless,  as  it  is  fleet- 
ing, and  the  sadness  of  the  lyric  mood  results 
largely  from  the  habitual  experience  in  life  of 
such  unfulfilled  or  thwarted  emotion,  tending 
to  repeat  itself.  All  art  requires  repose  as  its 
end;  and  the  principle  of  repose  is  as  necessary 
in  the  lyric  as  elsewhere;  but  it  is  found  usually 
in  the  exhaustion  rather  than  the  satisfaction 
of  the  emotion.  On  the  scale  of  longer  poetry, 
this  repose  is  obtained  by  a  prophetic  touch. 
Thus  in  the  great  case  of  English  elegy,  Milton 
finds  repose  at  the  close  of  his  lament  for  Lycidas 
in  the  imaging  of  the  Saints'  paradise,  and 
Tennyson  in  In  Memoriam  finds  it  in  a  pan- 
theistic faith  of  the  eternity  of  love  in  union 
with  the  living  divine  will,  and  Shelley  finds  it 

46 


Lyrical  Poetry 

in  Adonais  in  the  hoped-for  escape  and  near 
flight  of  his  own  soul  into  that  world  whither 
Adonais  has  gone  and  from  which  the  soul  of 
Keats  "beacons''  to  him  like  a  star  out  of 
eternity;  or,  in  a  different  field,  Shelley  finds 
repose  for  the  passion  of  humanity  in  that 
millennium  which  he  invents  and  sings  in  the 
fourth  act  of  Prometheus  Unbound.  In  short 
lyrics,  however,  the  repose  is  often  a  mere 
katharsis  or  relief,  an  exhaustion  with  peace 
following  on  the  subsidence  of  the  emotion,  and 
theoretically  in  a  complete  lyric  this  point  should 
be  reached.  It  is  reached  in  Burns'  Highland 
Mary  in  the  thought  of  her  eternal  presence  in 
his  memory;  it  is  reached  in  Keats'  Nightingale 
and  in  Shelley's  Naples'  poem;  on  the  other 
hand  it  is  often  not  reached,  as  in  Shelley's 
Indian  Serenade,  where  the  poem  ends  on  a  note 
of  climbing  passion,  though  the  picture  is  of 
the  exhausted  and  fainting  lover.  The  type  of 
the  lyric  that  finds  no  repose  —  the  type  of  de- 
sire in  the  broad  sense,  of  all  desire  as  such,  is  in 
the  lines  — 

"The  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star, 
Of  the  night  for  the  morrow  — 
The  devotion  to  something  afar 
From  the  sphere  of  our  sorrow!" 

47 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

These  are  the  last  lines  of  the  poem  to  which 
they  belong  —  a  poem  ending  on  the  climbing 
note.  The  mystery  of  human  desire  has  found 
no  purer  expression  than  in  these  lines.  Lyric 
poetry  in  general  tells  the  fate  of  that  desire 
through  the  wide  range  of  its  many  forms,  brief 
or  extended,  the  love-song,  the  elegy,  the  choral 
ode,  and  if  sometimes  it  sings  songs  of  triumph 
like  Miriam  and  epithalamiums  of  happy  con- 
summation like  Spenser,  yet  more  often  its 
burden  is  of  failure,  of  the  thwarted  life  and  the 
unfulfilled  dream;  and  even  in  the  grander 
forms  of  the  drama  and  the  epic,  poetry,  using 
the  lyrical  note  and  embodying  the  passion  of 
man,  sets  forth  the  same  lesson  of  the  resurrec- 
tion of  that  which  springs  eternally  futile  in  the 
human  breast,  —  the  double  lesson  of  love's 
infinite  despair  and  life's  infinite  hope. 

This  deep  note  of  intense  lyrical  passion  will 
be  felt  by  the  reader  only  in  proportion  to  the 
richness  and  profundity  of  his  own  life  and  his 
capacity  to  be  so  moved.  Such  poetry  gives 
itself,  if  at  all,  unsought,  by  virtue  of  its  inner 
intimacy  with  the  experience  of  the  reader; 
appreciation  of  it  is  not  arrived  at  by  study, 
though   study   in   the   sense   of    attentive    con- 

48 


Lyrical  Poetry 

templation,  of  dwelling  on  the  poem,  may  assist 
in  finer  appreciation  of  it.  The  larger  part  of 
brief  verse,  however,  makes  no  such  demand 
upon  the  reader;  much  of  it,  and  much  that  is 
most  useful,  lies  in  the  realm  of  the  affections, 
of  incident  and  action.  The  lyric  naturally 
lends  itself  to  the  representation  of  dramatic 
moments  and  to  the  interpretation  of  character 
in  vivid  ways.  It  is  thus  that  Browning  habitu- 
ally employs  it.  The  lyric  is  limited  in  length 
according  to  the  intensity  of  its  feeling;  the  more 
intense,  the  more  brief.  This  does  not  involve 
denying  that  a  long  poem  may  be  essentially 
lyrical.  Passion  in  life  is,  at  times,  a  prolonged 
and  varied  experience,  but  in  such  a  case  it 
proceeds  by  moments  of  high  feeling  separated 
by  periods  of  repose.  It  is  for  this  reason  that 
such  experience  is  rendered  by  a  succession  of 
lyrics  which  in  their  sequence  compose  a  com- 
plete poem.  Tennyson's  In  Memoriam  is  thus 
built  up  of  "swallow-flights  of  song";  his 
Maud  is  similarly  constructed;  Shakespeare's 
Sonnets  afford  another  passionate  example.  It 
remains  true  that  these  poems  and  others  like 
them  make  their  impression  rather  by  their 
detail  than  as  a  whole,  and  are  remembered  and 

49 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

enjoyed  by  their  fragmentary  parts,  by  special 
passages  and  units  of  the  series;  they  are  to  be 
read  in  rather  than  to  be  read  through,  or  if 
perused  consecutively  they  are  seldom  to  be 
finished  at  one  sitting.  Only  the  hardened 
scholar  can  read  an  Elizabethan  sonnet  sequence 
without  taking  breath,  and  then  with  little 
pleasure.  The  lyric,  however,  lengthens  natu- 
rally in  the  elegy  such  as  Adonais,  in  the  tale  such 
as  M amnion,  and  in  a  poem  of  meditation  such 
as  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage;  and  it  takes  on 
a  high  organic  form  in  the  dramatic  sphere, 
though  with  aid  from  non-lyrical  elements,  of 
which  the  great  example  in  English  is  Shelley's 
Prometheus  Unbound.  It  is  by  familiarity  with 
its  brief  forms  and  a  thorough  appreciation  of 
these  that  the  rather  exceptional  power  of  en- 
joying and  appropriating  a  long  lyrical  poem 
is  gained.  The  better  way  of  approach  to 
lyrical  poetry  is  by  the  use  of  anthologies,  but 
preferably  by  anthologies  of  a  single  poet  than 
by  those  which  contain  selections  from  many 
authors.  It  is  seldom  useful  to  read  all  the 
works  of  a  poet  at  the  start;  the  best  writings  of 
each  have  already  been  sifted  out  by  consent, 
and  are  easily  obtained  by  themselves;  but  in 

50 


Lyrical  Poetry 

anthologies  confined  to  one  poet  personality 
still  binds  the  poems  together,  they  reflect  light 
one  upon  another,  and  by  their  inward  similari- 
ties they  enforce  the  peculiar  traits  of  the  poet, 
deepen  the  impression,  and  give  an  increasing 
power  of  appreciation  along  the  lines  of  his 
special  powers  and  sensibilities.  If  the  poet  is 
to  be  a  favorite  and  to  make  an  engrossing  and 
almost  private  appeal  to  the  reader,  the  ac- 
quaintance with  the  complete  works  will  become 
a  necessity  and  be  self-enforced  by  the  taste 
that  has  been  formed ;  until  then  it  can  well  wait. 
It  is  seldom  that  an  anthology  including  many 
writers  possesses  any  such  unity.  Palgrave's 
Golden  Treasury  is  exceptional  in  this  regard; 
it  has  the  felicity  of  being  an  expression  of  the 
English  genius  in  poetry,  and  of  so  containing 
an  individuality,  with  powers  of  mutual  reflec- 
tion of  part  to  part  and  of  an  increment  of  sig- 
nificance to  the  whole,  similar  to  that  in  one 
man's  works.  The  Greek  Anthology  is  likewise 
unified  by  racial  genius.  The  criticism  offered 
by  Palgrave  in  his  notes,  which  are  usually 
neglected,  is  also  singularly  admirable,  compact, 
clear,  penetrating  and  governed  by  a  just  taste. 
It  contains  indeed  in  its  small  limits  almost  an 

51 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

education  in  poetic  taste.  A  similarly  remark- 
able aid  for  the  lighter  forms  of  verse,  including 
guiding  criticism  and  a  characterization  of  the 
artistic  form,  is  given  by  Frederick  Lockyer 
in  a  final  note  to  his  own  poems;  it  suffices  of 
itself  to  direct  the  reader  through  the  whole 
field.  Such  criticism  as  is  afforded  by  these 
two  writers,  so  modestly  put  forth  as  to  be 
almost  hidden,  is  very  rare,  and  the  reader 
should  avail  himself  of  it  for  cultivation  and 
information.  To  apprehend  the  spirit  of  lyrical 
poetry  Shelley's  Defence  of  Poetry  should  be 
read;  to  understand  some  of  its  ends  and  means 
in  practise  Wordsworth's  Prefaces  are  still  the 
most  useful  declaration  of  its  principles. 

To  these  hints  and  suggestions  as  to  the 
nature  of  lyrical  poetry  and  the  modes  of  ap- 
proach to  it  a  final  counsel  may  be  added.  It 
unlocks  emotion,  and  pours  it  in  free  and  elo- 
quent forms  in  an  imaginary  world;  it  teaches 
the  wise  and  beautiful  behavior  of  the  soul 
in  its  emotional  life.  The  scene  is  imaginary, 
but  the  emotion  is  real;  and  it  may  be  more 
than  a  sympathetic  emotion;  it  may  so  repeat 
the  reader's  experience  and  express  his  actual 
self  as  to  be  personal  and  his  own  as  if  he  had 

52 


Lyrical  Poetry 

written  the  poem.  This  is  the  test  of  success 
with  the  reader,  that  he  shall  seem  to  have 
written  the  book.  If,  however,  the  emotion 
remains  only  sympathetic,  it  opens  to  the  reader 
the  large  passion  of  the  world's  life,  the  hopes 
and  fears  of  his  kind  and  the  modes  of  man's 
consolation.  It  is  thus  that  he  becomes  human- 
ized, and  adds  to  his  own  life  the  life  which  is  that 
of  man.  Emotion  so  felt  may  not  necessarily 
result  directly  in  action;  but  it  results  in  charac- 
ter; it  softens,  refines  and  ennobles  the  soul,  and 
it  illuminates  life  for  the  intellect.  In  that  self- 
development  which  every  live  spirit  seeks,  the 
power  of  emotion  is  a  main  part  of  the  capacity 
to  live  and  know  and  understand.  In  the  private 
experience  of  a  cultivated  man  the  imaginary 
life,  lived  in  art  and  dream  and  the  stirring  of 
the  thousand  susceptibilities  of  his  nature  that 
never  pass  from  his  consciousness  outward  but 
are  shut  in  his  own  silent  world,  is  a  large  part 
of  reality  to  him,  in  the  strict  sense,  —  it  is  his 
larger  life,  the  life  of  the  soul.  Lyrical  poetry 
holds  its  high  place  by  virtue  of  its  power  to 
nourish  such  a  life. 


53 


CHAPTER  III 

NARRATIVE   POETRY 

THE  second  great  division  of  experience  is 
action;  it  is  rendered  in  the  ideal  forms 
of  literary  art  most  purely  by  the  epic  and  the 
drama;  in  the  first  the  action  is  related,  in  the 
second  it  is  represented.  It  is  not  necessary 
for  the  beginner  to  enter  upon  the  aesthetic 
theory  of  these  two  modes  of  literature;  his 
business  is  rather  to  make  an  acquaintance  with 
the  books,  to  have  a  first  view  of  their  contents, 
than  to  analyze  their  philosophic  structure. 
Epic  and  drama,  too,  are  only  the  highest 
forms  of  the  literature  of  action;  narrative 
poetry  includes  much  that  can  hardly  be  charac- 
terized as  epic,  and  it  is  convenient  to  treat 
under  this  head  poetry  which  is  not  strictly  a 
narration  of  action,  but  which  describes  or  sets 
forth  experience  at  length,  such  as  Virgil's 
Georgics,  Lucretius,  or  the  long  poems  of  Words- 
worth.    The  most  easy  introduction  to  narra- 

54 


Byron 


Narrative  Poetry 

tive  poetry  in  English  is  by  means  of  Scott's 
tales  in  verse,  romantic  in  atmosphere,  gallant 
in  action  and  swift  in  movement;  their  objec- 
tive realism,  similar  to  that  of  man's  earliest 
poetry,  is  a  point  of  great  advantage,  and  assists 
immediate  appreciation  by  simple  and  untrained 
minds.  Byron's  Tales  which  naturally  follow 
are  more  full  of  adventure  and  passion,  melo- 
dramatic, and  as  they  in  their  time  outrivaled 
and  silenced  Scott's  saner  genius,  they  still  in 
the  reading  are  more  effective  in  rousing  and 
exciting  the  mind;  but  Scott's  tales  have  shown 
the  more  enduring  quality,  possibly,  after  all, 
and  are  more  widely  popular.  If  there  be  in 
the  reader  any  capacity  to  be  stirred  by  romantic 
narrative,  these  two  poets  will  bring  it  forth 
without  fail;  and  the  entrance  on  the  path  once 
being  made,  the  way  onward  has  an  open  career 
by  many  issues.  Concurrently  with  the  tale 
of  adventure  the  romantic  life  of  nature  may 
well  be  approached  as  it  is  set  forth,  for  example, 
in  Longfellow's  Hiawatha,  which  appeals  to 
simple  poetic  tastes  requiring  a  high  degree  of 
objective  reality  in  a  poem.  It  is  a  poem  in 
which  nature  is  so  romantically  presented  as  to 
become  almost  a  fresh  creation  of  the  wilderness 

55 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

and  a  renewal  of  primitive  life;  it  gives  great 
pleasure  to  the  young  and  is  an  admirable 
approach  to  the  poetical  view  of  nature  which  in 
modern  English  verse  is  so  fundamental,  en- 
grossing and  various  in  its  results. 

Though  it  is  not  commonly  thought  to  be  the 
case,  it  is  likely  that  the  longer  poems  of  Words- 
worth, The  Prelude  and  The  Excursion,  are 
more  available  in  developing  this  point  of  view 
and  habit  of  mind  than  is  supposed.  Words- 
worth is  usually  a  favorite  poet  with  young 
students,  and  he  especially  appeals  to  the 
quieter  and  self -commanded  temperaments,  to 
whom  the  abandon  of  intenser  masters  is  un- 
natural; his  moods  are  more  even  with  life,  his 
message  is  plain,  and  in  all  ways  he  is  a  most 
accessible  poet  to  those  less  poetically  inclined. 
The  Prelude  and  The  Excursion  are  regarded 
as  tedious  poems,  and  to  have  read  them  is 
commonly  considered  a  victorious  trial  of  the 
spirit.  I  frankly  confess  to  wishing  that  they 
were  longer  than  they  are.  The  two  poems 
together  present  the  poetic  history  of  an  extraor- 
dinarily sensitive  and  masculine  mind,  and  such 
an  autobiography  of  a  poet's  introduction  to  life 
may  well  be  full  of  useful  lights  on  the  things 

56 


Narrative  Poetry 

of  the  poetic  life,  especially  for  the  reader  who 
is  himself  just  entering  on  that  life  and  who 
realizes  that  it  is  indeed  a  life  and  not  merely 
a  study  that  he  is  entering  on.  These  poems 
contain  a  fund  of  great  truths  relating  to  that 
life  nowhere  else  so  well  coordinated  and  set 
forth  in  coherency  with  life's  whole. 

Preeminent  among  these  traits  is  that  of  the 
function  of  nature  in  giving  a  scale  to  life,  some 
sort  of  perspective  in  which  man  may  take  a 
relative  measure  of  himself  and  of  his  mortal 
career.  In  the  mere  massiveness  of  nature,  in 
the  comparative  eternity  of  her  life  in  the  ele- 
ments of  air,  earth  and  ocean,  in  the  impressive 
tumult  and  the  no  less  impressive  peace  of  her 
changing  moods  from  day  to  day,  in  the  vast 
power  and  certainty  of  her  life-processes  in  sun- 
light, the  succession  of  the  seasons  and  the 
phenomena  of  the  death  and  birth  of  things  in 
multitude  of  being,  —  in  all  this  there  is  the 
sense  of  that  infinite  in  opposition  to  which  man 
recognizes  his  own  finitude.  One  who  lives  in 
comparative  solitude,  like  the  dalesmen  whom 
Wordsworth  knew,  always  in  the  presence  of 
nature,  has  close  at  hand  an  unceasing  correc- 
tion of  that  egotism  that  grows  up  in  cities,  — 

57 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

in  the  sphere,  that  is,  where  human  energies 
seem  to  occupy  the  scene,  and  the  ambitions 
and  worldly  aims  of  men  seem  to  be  all  in  all. 
Napoleon,  absorbed  in  the  spectacle  and  mastery 
of  merely  human  things,  there  where  human 
qualities  of  intelligence,  force  and  strategy 
count  for  most,  may  seem  even  to  himself  a 
kind  of  demigod  whom  life  obeys;  but  the 
dalesman,  constantly  in  the  sight  of  the  hills 
and  streams  and  their  tempests,  constantly 
aware  of  the  conditioning  might  of  nature  in 
harvest  and  herds,  constantly  open  to  the  in- 
flowing on  his  soul  of  the  mysterious  agencies 
of  cloud  and  sunshine,  of  darkness  and  peril, 
and  of  the  various  beneficence  as  well  as  of  the 
hard  rebuffs  of  nature,  retains  the  true  sane 
sense  of  humanity  as  a  creature.  So  Words- 
worth presents  the  case,  in  describing  the 
advantage  of  the  countryman  over  the  dweller 
in  cities,  and  of  a  life  led  in  alliance  with  nature 
over  the  life  of  the  market  and  the  court.  The 
idea  is  not  unlike  that  belonging  to  Greek 
tragedy.  The  spectacle  of  tragedy  in  the  lives 
of  kings  and  princes  and  favorites  of  the  gods, 
which  was  the  sort  that  the  Greek  stage  habitu- 
ally presented,  was  believed  to  be  wholesome 

58 


Narrative  Poetry 

for  the  ordinary  body  of  spectators,  because 
they  thereby  found  a  scale  of  misfortune  so 
much  exceeding  anything  in  their  own  lives  that 
their  mishaps  appeared  not  only  more  bearable 
but  really  of  slight  importance.  In  comparison 
with  the  woes  of  Agamemnon  or  (Edipus,  their 
own  lives  were  felicity.  In  the  same  way,  if 
one  has  the  scale  of  nature  in  continual  sight, 
he  lives  with  the  infinite  of  power  and  the  in- 
finite of  repose  close  to  him,  and  he  is  thereby 
kept  humble  in  thought,  and  an  anodyne  of 
peace  steals  into  his  soul  to  quiet,  to  console 
and  heal.  Nature  thus  first  dilates  the  mind 
with  her  own  spectacle,  gives  to  it  touches  of 
her  own  infinitude,  and  yet  preserves  the  mind's 
humility  at  the  very  moment  that  it  adds  to  the 
mind's  majesty  in  living;  and  next  it  tranquilizes 
the  soul  in  mortal  grief.  In  its  most  common 
form,  then,  and  for  all,  even  unlettered  men, 
nature  is  the  familiar  presence  of  the  infinite; 
and  those  who  live  in  its  presence  truly  find  at 
once  and  without  effort,  find  in  boyhood  and 
youth  in  an  unconscious  process,  that  scale  of 
the  infinite  for  their  lives,  which  the  soul  needs 
in  order  to  be  truly  born.  This  is  the  doctrine 
which  is  elaborated  in  the  Prelude  and  illus- 

59 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

trated  in  the  Excursion,  permeating  both  poems; 
and  it  is  presented  both  externally  in  the  lives 
of  the  dalesmen,  and  personally  as  the  life  of 
Wordsworth's  dawning  mind.  If  the  doctrine 
be  well  apprehended,  it  is  of  itself  a  large  prepa- 
ration for  the  poetic  life  which  lies  in  the  appre- 
ciation of  modern  poetry,  so  far  as  the  description 
and  interpretation  of  nature  enter  into  it;  and 
in  all  its  narrative  poetry  this  is  a  large  element. 
Narrative  poetry,  such  as  that  of  Scott,  Byron 
and  Wordsworth,  is  found  in  great  profusion  in 
literature  and  is  of  every  degree  of  merit.  It 
does  not  differ  in  its  kind  of  interest  from  the 
record  of  similar  experience  or  reflection  upon 
experience  in  prose,  and  much  of  it  indeed  is  a 
survival  in  a  late  age  of  the  habits  of  that  early 
period  when,  prose  not  having  been  developed, 
poetry  was  the  normal  mode  of  all  literary 
composition.  That  is  one  reason  why  so  large 
a  part  of  narrative  poetry  is  quickly  dead. 
The  poetic  form  gives  condensation,  speed 
and  brilliancy  to  narrative,  but  in  general  the 
narrative  succeeds  in  proportion  to  its  brevity. 
It  requires  a  master  of  narrative  like  Chaucer 
to  maintain  interest  in  poetic  fiction;  and  as  a 
rule,   narrative  poems,  owing  to  the  difficulty 

60 


Narrative  Poetry 

of  sustaining  emotional  interest  for  a  prolonged 
time,  are  remembered  by  their  glowing,  pic- 
turesque and  romantic  passages.  The  break- 
ing up  of  long  poems  into  books  and  cantos,  or 
into  single  adventures  separately  treated  as  by 
Tennyson,  is  a  device  to  avoid  this  difficulty. 
In  prose  the  telling  of  a  story  as  such  is  more 
facile  and  generally  more  effective;  if  a  modern 
narrative  in  verse  succeeds,  it  is  by  virtue  of 
something  besides  the  story.  The  literature 
of  all  nations  is  strewn  with  the  stranded  wrecks 
of  poetic  narratives,  from  the  times  of  Greece 
through  the  interminable  garrulity  of  the  middle 
ages  and  the  spawning  epics  of  the  south  of 
Europe  down  to  the  days  of  Sou  they.  In  its 
rivalry  with  prose,  poetic  narrative  succeeds 
only  by  emotional  intensity,  as  in  Keats,  or  by 
some  romance  in  the  tale  favored  by  grace  in 
the  telling. 

The  truth  is  that  poetic  narrative  in  its  great 
examples,  those  that  are  supreme  works  of  the 
race,  is  much  more  than  simple  narration  of  an 
action,  description  of  a  scene,  or  meditation 
upon  a  theme.  The  epic  exceeds  these  lesser 
poems  by  virtue  of  being  a  summary  of  times 
past,  of  civilizations  entire,  of  phases  of  man's 

61 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

long  abiding  moods  of  contemplating  life;  the 
epic  contains  the  genius  of  the  race  that  pro- 
duces it,  and  is  the  attempt  of  that  race  to  realize 
its  dream  of  what  it  has  been,  is  and  shall  be, 
not  in  any  practical  achievement  in  the  real 
world  but  in  its  own  consciousness  of  its  ideals. 
They  belong  to  the  most  impersonal  of  man's 
works;  they  are  social  poems,  condensations  of 
broad  human  life  into  which  centuries  are 
compressed,  landmarks  of  the  progress  of  the 
race  through  change.  If  the  poet  individually 
writes  them,  they  are  no  less  the  combination 
of  ages  of  tradition,  its  product  and  embodiment. 
In  the  earlier  examples  the  tradition  is  national; 
in  Homer  and  Virgil,  it  is  Greek  and  Roman 
genius  that  are  treasured  up;  but  in  later  writers 
it  is  rather  the  tradition  of  the  civilization  to 
which  they  belong  than  the  pure  national 
tradition  that  is  expressed.  In  English  the 
great  examples  are  three,  Spenser's  Faery 
Queene,  Milton's  Paradise  Lost  and  Tennyson's 
Idyls  of  the  King.  The  first  and  second  are 
poems  of  the  Renaissance  spirit,  and  involve, 
one  the  tradition  of  chivalry  and  the  middle 
age,  the  other  that  of  Christian  story  and  an- 
tiquity, while  Tennyson  resumes  the  Arthurian 

62 


Narrative  Poetry 

legend.  It  is  obvious  that  such  poems  require 
in  the  reader  much  preparation  by  study  before 
they  can  be  intelligently  read;  for  such  reading 
there  must  be  a  knowledge  of  Scripture,  my- 
thology and  chivalry  in  particular,  but  also 
much  besides.  These  poems  are,  in  truth,  the 
most  fascinating  form  of  history,  and  perhaps 
its  most  efficient  form ;  and  as  the  English  kings 
are  most  humanly  known  in  Shakespeare,  past 
history  in  general  is  most  alive  in  the  epics 
that  sum  it  up  imaginatively  and  interpret  it  in 
terms  of  the  immortal  spirit  of  man.  Actual 
history,  life  as  it  was,  is  to  this  reincarnation  of  it 
in  poetry  merely  dead  annals ;  like  the  excavated 
ruins  of  Troy,  in  comparison  with  the  Iliad,  — 
a  desolation,  debris,  a  thing  of  the  gray  annihila- 
tion of  time.  The  power  of  historical  imagina- 
tion is,  therefore,  indispensable  to  the  reader, 
whose  assimilation  of  the  poem  will  be  propor- 
tionate to  his  exercise  of  it.  For  each  of  the 
great  epics  there  is  a  stock  of  interpretative  and 
illustrative  criticism  easily  accessible  and  ad- 
mirably ordered;  but  after  all  aids  have  done 
their  utmost,  the  reader  is  still  keenly  aware 
of  the  dividing  power  of  time  which  corrodes 
and  effaces  the  material  of  the  poem,  impairs 

63 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

sympathy  and  not  seldom  transforms  its  original 
charm  into  charm  of  another  sort  which,  how- 
ever attractive,  he  knows  to  be  different.  This 
difficulty  of  complete  comprehension  is  greater 
as  he  approaches  foreign  epics  and  those  of 
antiquity.  Tasso  is,  perhaps,  most  nigh  with 
his  Jerusalem  Delivered;  for  Ariosto's  Orlando 
Furioso  a  special  culture  is  necessary;  and 
Camoens,  in  his  Lusiads,  is  perhaps  the  most 
unseizable  of  the  moderns.  Dante's  Divine 
Comedy  requires  prolonged  study;  Lowell  said, 
somewhat  hyperbolically,  that  the  thirteenth 
century  existed  to  annotate  this  poem,  but  by 
the  phrase  he  conveyed  a  truth  and  indicated 
the  immense  significance  of  the  poem.  Not- 
withstanding their  distance  in  time,  Virgil  and 
Homer  still  remain  near  to  the  classically  edu- 
cated reader,  one  by  virtue  of  his  temperament, 
the  other  by  his  reality;  both,  besides  their 
powerful  historical  interpretation  of  race,  en- 
gage human  interest  deeply  in  romantic  forms. 
The  epics,  in  their  true  significance,  are  only 
for  strong  minds.  They  afford,  however,  the 
best  introduction  to  a  foreign  literature  or  to  thai 
of  a  past  stage  of  culture.     They  involve  such  an 

illumination  of  the  period   and  yield   such   an 

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Narrative  Poetry 

insight  into  the  racial  qualities  and  career  of 
the  peoples  whose  ideals  they  summarize  that 
the  entire  literature  of  those  nations  in  other 
forms  becomes  intelligible,  capable  of  appre- 
ciation, provocative  of  sympathy  to  as  high  a 
degree  as  it  is  possible  to  reach.  It  is  seldom 
that  a  foreigner  ever  appreciates  literature  as 
a  native,  owing  to  the  barriers  of  language  and 
the  difference  in  heredity,  education  and  race 
genius;  but  it  is  in  the  epics,  which  have  indeed 
a  more  cosmopolitan  character  than  other  forms 
of  literature  through  the  community  of  their 
literary  tradition,  that  the  genius  of  a  nation 
or  the  spirit  of  a  long  age  is  most  thoroughly 
and  deeply  felt  and  perceived.  No  literary 
study  is  on  the  whole  more  fruitful  in  broadening 
the  mind  and  sympathies  by  forcing  them  to 
range  widely  in  the  history  of  the  human  spirit 
and  to  observe  its  modes  in  distant  times  and 
contrasted  ages  and  in  nations  of  high  achieve- 
ment. It  is  through  them  that  the  conception 
of  world-literature,  as  opposed  to  special  litera- 
tures, most  readily  begins  to  form. 

The  epic  even  in  its  greatest  examples  does 
not  escape  from  the  general  difficulty  of  narra- 
tive poetry  in  sustaining  interest  for  a  long  time. 

65 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

Homer  nods,  and  his  successors  inherited  the 
weakness  with  the  art.  Every  device  has, 
nevertheless,  been  availed  of  to  avoid  such 
defects  of  tediousness  or  of  waning  interest. 
The  art  of  narrative  is  carried  to  its  highest 
point  in  the  manner  of  presenting  the  story,  of 
displaying  the  characters,  of  interweaving  epi- 
sodes, of  varying  the  matter,  contrasting  it, 
heightening  it;  and  one  result  is  that  the  epics 
are  remembered  by  their  eloquent  passages, 
their  dramatic  moments,  their  episodes  and 
their  highly  finished  parts  rather  than  as  wholes; 
it  is,  perhaps,  only  by  the  scholar  that  the  effect 
of  the  work  as  a  whole  is  felt  and  its  unities 
recognized.  In  writing  it  each  new  poet  has 
availed  himself  of  all  that  has  gone  before,  and 
has  freely  imitated,  incorporated  and  rewritten 
the  work  of  his  predecessors,  so  that  the  art 
gained  cumulative  power  in  a  remarkable  meas- 
ure, and  this  not  only  by  the  use  of  old  modes 
and  resources  but  by  an  appropriation  of  the 
substance  itself  by  means  of  translation  or 
imitation  that  was  equivalent  to  direct  copy 
though  often  accompanied  by  improvement. 
The  epics  have  a  family  resemblance,  and  show 
their  descent  by  their  features.     It  is  instructive 

66 


Narrative  Poetry 

to  notice  also,  in  their  succession,  how  they 
reflect  the  growth  of  civilization  by  their  in- 
creasing social  complexity,  the  softening  of 
their  manners,  the  development  of  the  element 
of  love  in  contrast  to  war,  the  changes  in  their 
divine  scheme,  the  refinement  in  moral  ideals, 
and,  in  general,  the  inwardness  of  the  life  they 
set  forth  in  proportion  as  the  world  ripens  in 
time  at  the  season  of  their  coming.  No  part  of 
literature  reflects  so  clearly  and  continuously 
the  gradual  spiritualization  of  human  life  in 
the  evolution  of  our  Western  civilization.  It 
is  not,  however,  its  narrative  art,  its  brilliant 
passages,  its  record  of  social  and  spiritual 
progress,  and  still  less  is  it  the  mere  tale  of  love 
and  war  in  their  individual  accidents,  that  have 
gained  for  the  epics  the  high  esteem,  and  indeed 
veneration,  in  which  they  are  held.  This  pro- 
ceeds from  the  fact  that  the  epic  poets  knew 
how  to  set  forth  the  tale  so  that  it  should  be  a 
tissue  of  that  symbolical  truth  which  is  the  stuff 
of  all  great  literature,  and  so  to  present  the  story 
of  a  great  design,  like  the  siege  of  Troy  or  the 
founding  of  Rome,  or  of  a  great  event  like  the 
fall  of  man,  or  of  a  great  adventure  like  that 
of  Spenser's  knights  or  Camoens'  sailors,  in  such 

67 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

a  way  that  while  true  in  its  individual  traits  it 
should  also  represent  and  express  the  fates  of 
human  life  in  general  as  they  were  seen  and 
known;  they  told  a  tale,  not  of  men's  lives,  but 
of  man's  life,  and  of  man's  life  at  its  highest 
energy,  luster  and  endurance,  its  utmost  power 
of  life.  Achilles  was  such  a  man  as  every 
Greek  would  wish  to  be  in  action,  and  the  tale 
was  of  what  was  possible  to  such  a  man,  for 
triumph  and  for  sorrow,  in  life  as  the  Greek 
knew  it.  The  breadth  of  interpretation  achieved, 
such  that  the  poem  was  the  expression  of  a 
race,  an  age,  a  great  mood  of  life  acting  and 
suffering,  was  the  measure  of  its  catholic  power 
to  express  life,  to  define  its  fortunes,  to  unload 
its  burdens,  to  declare  its  meaning.  This  is 
ideal  truth,  as  poetic  art  knows  it,  written  large. 
One  does  not  go  far  in  literature  in  any  direc- 
tion without  coming  into  deep  waters,  —  a  fact 
that  the  study  of  the  epic  quickly  reveals.  With- 
out entering  upon  aesthetic  theory  in  detail  or 
developing  the  philosophical  interest  of  the  epic 
fully,  it  is  of  use  to  glance  at  the  moral  signifi- 
cance of  epic  poetry  in  which  so  much  of  its 
power  lies.  The  epic  is  a  high  organic  form  of 
art,    and   this   form    is   realized    with    different 

68 


Narrative  Poetry 

degrees  of  fulness  and  clearness  in  different 
examples.  It  is  grounded  on  the  operation  of 
the  will,  which  is  the  source  of  action;  and  in 
the  epic  form  it  is  the  social  will  that  is  con- 
templated, organized  in  the  life  of  nations. 
The  epic  centers  about  a  collision  which  takes 
place  in  the  social  sphere  rather  than  in  that  of 
personal  life,  and  it  has  an  historical  basis  or 
one  that  is  accepted  as  historical.  The  conflict 
is  between  opposed  nations  or  races,  in  which 
different  ideals  of  civilization  challenge  each 
other  to  deadly  encounter.  It  is  sometimes 
stated  that  these  are  opposed,  as  a  higher  to  a 
lower  civilization,  a  higher  to  a  lower  will;  and 
as  the  will  of  the  social  group  is  always  inter- 
preted by  the  members  of  that  group  as  being 
the  will  of  its  ruling  and  providential  gods,  it  is 
often  represented  that  in  the  epic  the  divine  will 
is  involved,  and  adds  its  power  of  victory  to 
the  winning  arms,  overthrowing  the  lower  will 
of  a  barbarous  and  profane  foe.  Thus  the 
conflict  of  Greece  with  Troy,  of  the  fates  of 
Rome  with  the  Carthaginian  and  the  Italian, 
of  the  arms  of  the  Crusaders  with  the  Saracen, 
of  the  genius  of  Portugal  with  the  Moslem,  of  the 
soul  with  sense  in  Spenser's  and  in  Tennyson's 

69 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

knights,  of  Satan  with  the  Omnipotent  in  Mil- 
ton's legend  of  creation,  —  all  these  involve  the 
divine  will  in  one  or  another  mode  of  its  mani- 
festation through  human  fortunes.  In  the  Iliad 
it  is  natural  to  think  of  the  Greeks  as  the  em- 
bodiment of  the  higher  civilization  and  the 
defenders  of  the  better  cause;  in  the  Mneid,  as 
the  mind  looks  back  on  the  vast  beneficence  of 
Rome  as  the  unifier  and  legislator  of  the  Medi- 
terranean world  and  the  civilizer  of  the  bar- 
barous North,  it  is  likewise  natural  to  regard 
the  fortunes  of  iEneas  as  the  fates  of  the  future, 
and  the  triumph  of  Rome  over  all  people  as  the 
victory  of  that  Providence  which  was  then 
known  as  the  divine  will  of  Jupiter,  the  Olym- 
pian; in  the  Christian  epics  a  like  view  is  less  a 
preconception  of  our  minds  than  a  part  of  our 
idea  of  the  world.  Optimism,  the  final  victory 
of  the  best,  would  seem  to  belong  to  the  epic 
and  to  be  contained  in  its  very  idea. 

Yet,  as  in  lyrical  poetry  the  prevailing  tone 
is  of  sadness,  so  in  the  epic  the  story  is  one  of 
the  sorrows  of  mankind.  Tragedy  stamps  them 
from  the  first  line  of  the  Iliad  to  the  farewell  of 
the  dying  Arthur.  It  is  obvious  at  once  that 
in  all  epics  the  side  that  loses  finds  its  career 

70 


Narrative  Poetry 

one  of  pure  tragedy,  and  in  its  fall  bears  always 
deeply  graved  the  tragic  mark  of  fatality.  The 
defeat  of  the  Trojans,  the  defeat  of  Turnus,  the 
defeat  of  any  beaten  cause  has  this  trait  in  a 
marked  form,  and  this  is  the  more  clearly  felt 
in  proportion  as  the  fatality  embodied  in  the 
new  power  of  the  victors  is  also  represented  as 
the  working  of  the  divine  will  adding  its  supreme 
might  to  that  power.  The  issue  for  the  con- 
quered is  not  merely  defeat,  but  the  tragic  issue 
of  death,  complete  extinction,  the  funeral  pyre 
of  Hector,  the  ashes  of  Troy.  The  principle  of 
repose  invoked  to  complete  the  work  of  art  is 
that  of  tragic  repose,  death.  The  tragic  mark 
also  appears  in  the  apparent  injustice  done  to  a 
noble  nature,  for  it  is  not  felt  that  Hector  de- 
serves his  fate;  he  is  a  victim  of  the  adverse  gods, 
the  same  that  Turnus  feared  in  his  last  mortal 
struggle.  Nor  is  the  tragic  note  confined  to 
the  beaten  cause.  In  the  victorious  cause 
tragedy  has  a  large  field  all  its  own.  The  price 
of  the  victory  of  the  divine  will,  or  of  the  higher 
civilization,  is  in  all  these  great  poems  a  tragic 
price,  and  is  the  more  plainly  and  openly  so 
in  proportion  to  the  height  of  the  poem.  In 
this  impression  the  epic  faithfully  repeats  that 

71 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

historic  experience  which  it  records  and  idealizes; 
it  is  grounded,  as  all  poetry  is,  in  life;  and,  still, 
as  we  mark  the  doomed  nations  and  races  going 
into  extinction,  see  them  pressed  westward  to 
the  seas  and  decimated  and  engulfed,  it  is  little 
joy  to  the  mind  to  contemplate  the  victory  of  the 
will  of  civilization  thus  enforced  by  battle-axe 
and  cannon  over  the  weaker  and  less  fortunate 
tribes  of  men.  Sacrifice  is  a  word  writ  large 
in  the  epical  life,  —  sacrifice  of  both  victor  and 
vanquished.  It  is  obvious  that  the  optimism 
of  the  epic  lies  in  the  efficacy  of  the  sacrifice, 
that  is,  in  the  validity  of  the  idea  of  social 
progress. 

As  the  epic  enters  the  religious  sphere,  it 
develops  its  central  conceptions  of  human  life 
most  remarkably.  Here  it  unfolds  the  most 
tragic  situation  that  it  has  been  given  to  man 
to  conceive.  It  is  nothing  less  than  the  notion 
that  in  the  confused  field  of  human  action  there 
is  a  supreme  and  fatal  collision  between  the 
human  will  as  such  and  the  divine  will  in  om- 
nipotence. At  all  times,  even  in  the  barbaric 
past,  there  have  been  what  men  thought  of  as 
collisions  between  men  and  the  gods,  —  there 
have   been   blasphemy   and   sacrilege;   but   the 

72 


Narrative  Poetry 

reason,  which  finds  its  career  in  generalization, 
has  here,  if  anywhere,  carried  its  generalizing 
power  to  the  madness  of  extremes,  and  evolved 
the  theory  that  not  men,  but  man,  not  in- 
dividuals of  exceptional  wickedness  but  the  race, 
is  in  opposition  to  God  by  virtue  of  the  human 
will  in  its  essence  being  in  conflict  with  the  divine 
will,  and  this  doctrine  is  summed  up  in  the 
notion  of  original  sin.  In  this  idea  the  tragic 
element  is  present  in  all  its  phases;  tragedy  is 
complete.  Fate,  or  necessity,  constrains  the 
victim  by  his  own  nature  which  is  already  born 
into  this  collision  and  finds  the  struggle  pre- 
determined; overwhelming  defeat  accompanies 
the  struggle;  and  the  end,  the  tragic  repose, 
comes,  not  only  in  mortal  death,  but  in  that 
extinction  of  the  will  itself  which  is  involved  in 
the  conception  of  damnation.  This  is  the  essen- 
tial, the  spiritual  tragedy  of  mankind,  looked  at 
from  the  darker  side.  On  the  other  hand  the 
principle  of  sacrifice  is  invoked  in  order  to 
secure  alleviation  of  this  situation;  but  the 
sacrifice  is  the  highest  conceivable,  consisting 
in  the  suffering  and  temporary  defeat  of  the 
Divine  itself,  in  the  scheme  of  salvation;  and 
even  under  the  operation  of  this  sacrifice  there 

73 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

remains,  as  in  all  epic,  the  tragic  destruction  of 
the  beaten  cause  and  its  adherents  in  hell. 
These  ideas  are  set  forth  in  poetry  in  two  great 
examples.  In  Milton  the  fable  is  fully  con- 
structed ;  on  the  side  of  the  history  of  the  human 
will  it  is  fully  developed  in  Paradise  Lost,  and 
on  the  side  of  the  Divine  will  partially  developed 
in  the  Paradise  Regained.  In  Dante's  Divine 
Comedy,  though  the  matter  is  not  there  pre- 
sented in  the  form  of  action  but  in  a  symbolical 
picture  of  the  results  in  the  after  world  of  Hell, 
Purgatory  and  Paradise,  the  substance  of  the 
situation  is  the  same;  here  is  the  fifth  act  of  the 
spiritual  tragedy  in  which  the  moment  of  repose 
must  come,  and  it  is  found  in  two  forms,  the 
death  of  the  wicked,  which  is  a  tragic  issue 
without  relief,  and  the  salvation  of  the  blessed, 
which  is  the  victory  of  the  higher  will  through 
sacrifice,  manifested  in  the  direction  of  longer 
and  fuller  life,  —  a  strictly  epic  issue.  It  is 
plainly  only  a  tempered  optimism  that  the  epic 
permits  to  the  reflective  man. 

Such  are  some  of  the  directions  in  which  the 
mind  makes  out,  if  it  would  grasp  the  pro- 
founder  significance  of  epical  poetry;  it  may 
rest  in  the  pleasure  of  contemplating  the  march 

74 


Narrative  Poetry 

of  great  events,  the  display  of  great  character  in 
action,  the  play  of  individual  adventure  and  the 
many  forms  of  imaginative  delight  that  the 
epic  utilizes  to  enrich  and  relieve  its  graver 
matter,  but  the  greater  the  mental  power  of  the 
reader  the  more  he  will  endeavor  to  comprehend 
the  profounder  contents  of  the  epic  in  its  medi- 
tation on  human  fate,  on  the  operation  of  the 
will,  not  in  individuals  merely  but  in  society,  or 
the  view  of  history  which  it  inculcates.  History, 
indeed,  holds  the  same  relation  to  it  that  biog- 
raphy does  to  lyrical  verse.  The  reader  of  the 
lyric  comes  to  love  the  author,  to  desire  to  know 
his  life  and  to  become,  in  a  sense,  his  comrade, 
because  he  feels  that  the  poems  are,  after  all, 
only  fragments  of  the  man  and  that  they,  or  the 
spirit  they  express,  are  integrated  in  the  poet's 
own  nature,  the  poet's  soul.  In  the  heart  of  the 
poet  he  finds  at  last  the  song.  In  a  like  way 
life  on  the  large  social  scale,  history,  lies  back 
of  epical  verse,  but  not  history  in  any  narrow 
sense  of  politics,  institutions,  manners;  it  is  life 
as  it  has  been  broadly  lived  in  the  past,  inclusive 
of  all  that  entered  into  it,  Greek  life,  Roman 
life,  the  life  of  the  Renaissance,  that  must  be 
more  fully  resuscitated  in  the  mind  before  the 

15 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

epics  give  up  their  treasure.  Such  study  be- 
longs to  the  enthusiast,  perhaps,  to  the  reader 
who  finds  in  literature  the  greater  part  of  his 
mental  life;  in  general  he  must  content  himself 
with  something  far  short  of  this,  and  be  con- 
fined to  the  immediate  pleasure  of  the  obvious 
part  of  the  poem,  its  events,  characters,  and 
situations.  Epic  poetry  is  rich  in  such  pleasure 
because  it  is  seldom  attempted  except  by  great 
masters  of  the  poetic  art  who  are  accustomed 
to  give  such  high  finish  to  their  work  as  lesser 
men  can  afford  only  to  short  attempts.  Virgil, 
Tennyson  and  Milton  exhausted  art  in  giving 
beauty  to  every  line  and  phrase,  to  every  incident, 
episode,  picture  by  itself.  The  surface  of  their 
poetry  is  perfect  and  brilliant  as  with  a  mosaic 
incrustation  of  color,  scene,  and  divine  glow  of 
art  like  that  of  the  builders  of  Italy.  In  the 
contemplation  of  this  resides  the  pure  poetic 
pleasure  undisturbed  by  philosophy  and  un- 
shadowed by  remoter  thought.  It  is  thus  that 
the  epics  should  be  first  known  and  appro- 
priated by  their  direct  objective  beauty  in 
detail,  as  a  vision  of  human  experience  in  the 
large;  the  rest  will  come  later,  if  at  all,  and  unless 
the  philosophic  interest  is  roused  in  the  reader 

76 


Narrative  Poetry 

so  as  to  become  a  commanding  need,  it  may  be 
spared,  for  above  all  things  poetic  appreciation 
should  have  spontaneity. 

Other  forms  of  narrative  poetry  are  best 
read  in  the  same  way  with  a  preliminary  atten- 
tion to  beauty  of  detail,  to  simple  scenes  and 
passages  that  of  themselves  attract  and  hold 
the  reader.  The  poetic  value  of  the  Georgics 
or  of  Lucretius  is  thus  most  readily  found,  and 
the  way  opened  to  the  appreciation  of  the  poems 
in  their  entirety.  Into  the  perception  of  the 
wholeness  of  a  great  poem,  even  of  moderate 
length,  so  many  elements  enter,  and  for  the 
most  part  the  habit  of  the  mind  in  artistic 
appreciation  is  so  imperfect  and  unfamiliar, 
that  it  is  not  to  be  expected  that  the  reader 
should  arrive  at  facility  in  such  understanding 
except  slowly  and  by  much  practise.  The  idyl, 
of  which  the  great  English  masters  are  Milton 
and  Tennyson,  perhaps  best  trains  the  mind  in 
the  appreciation  of  beauty  in  detail  and  the 
understanding  of  that  glowing  surface  of  color 
and  picture  which  is  the  poetic  method  of  the 
greatest  masters,  those  who  have  had  most 
patience  with  their  art.  These  exquisite  scenes 
of  the  idyls,  each  wrought  out  with  the  fineness 

77 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

of  a  cameo  and  linked  one  with  another  so 
subtly  that  the  passing  of  the  eye  from  one  to 
the  next  is  hardly  marked,  are  triumphs  of  ex- 
pression; if  the  reader  has  the  sense  of  beauty, 
they  educate  it  with  great  rapidity,  and  they 
accustom  him  to  that  slow  reading  which  is 
necessary  in  poetry  in  order  to  give  time  for  the 
contemplation  of  the  scene  to  have  its  effect 
on  the  mind.  Tennyson's  idyls  were  the  prin- 
cipal education  of  his  generation  in  the  sense 
of  beauty  in  life,  and  the  vogue  of  his  method 
and  melody  through  the  English  world  indicates 
the  lack,  almost  the  void,  that  it  supplied, 
though  Landor  and  Keats  were  before  him  and 
Milton  survived  as  the  best  English  master  of 
the  method.  It  is  essentially  the  classic  method, 
the  Greek  tradition.  The  reader  once  brought 
to  true  delight  in  the  idyl  finds  the  way  to 
pastoral  poetry  open  and  soon  adapts  himself 
to  the  conventions  of  that  world,  so  remote  from 
actuality,  where  the  dream  of  life  as  it  might  be 
fills  the  scene  and  human  experience  is  freed 
from  its  discordant  elements  and  poetry  be- 
comes more  like  picture  and  statue  and  music 
than  in  any  other  part  of  its  domain.  This 
Arcadian  world,  which  is  the  most  insubstan- 

78 


Narrative  Poetry 

tial  part  of  poetry  to  the  English  reader,  is  by 
its  spirit  rather  a  division  of  lyrical  than  of 
narrative  poetry;  but  it  presents  a  vision  of  life 
and  is  descriptive  of  a  realm  of  imagination, 
and  it  is  characteristically  a  telling  of  life,  though 
by  a  singing  voice,  as  in  Theocritus,  Virgil  and 
the  Italians.  Pastoral  poetry  is  a  highly  refined 
form  of  the  art,  and  the  taste  for  it  indicates 
that  the  education  of  the  reader  approaches 
completion  in  so  far  as  his  induction  into  its 
forms  is  concerned.  But  the  nature  of  narra- 
tive poetry  in  its  various  phases  has  been  suffi- 
ciently opened;  in  general,  as  lyrical  poetry 
develops  personality  through  emotion,  narra- 
tive verse  displays  the  various  scene  of  the 
world,  society  in  action,  the  breadth  of  experi- 
ence, and  develops  social  power,  knowledge 
and  a  many-sided  touch  with  life.  It  is  the 
vision  of  life,  and  presents  experience  exten- 
sively rather  than  intensively,  with  objective 
reality;  it  provokes  thought  and  initiates  the 
individual  into  the  world  life  of  man  both  his- 
torically and  ideally. 


79 


CHAPTER  IV 

DRAMATIC    POETRY 

THE  drama  has  many  claims  to  be  re- 
garded as  the  highest  form  of  literary 
art.  It  deals  with  the  material  of  human 
experience  immediately,  giving  bodily  form  to 
life;  even  all  that  is  invisible,  belonging  in  the 
unseen  world  of  inward  experience,  and  all  that 
is  ineffable  in  passion,  is  presented  at  least  as 
plainly  as  in  the  life  itself  by  the  intervention  of 
speech,  gesture  and  the  visible  presence  of  the 
event.  The  form  of  art,  too,  employed  by  the 
drama  is  highly  organic;  reason  enters  into  it 
with  stern  insistence,  and  intellectualizes  the 
life  set  forth,  relating  one  part  to  another  with 
a  rational  end  in  view.  Dramatic  theory  may 
be  best  illustrated  by  the  example  of  tragedy. 
The  essence  of  tragedy  is  a  collision  in  the 
sphere  of  the  will;  the  will  strives  to  realize 
itself  in  action,  and  in  the  attempt  collides  with 
some  obstacle.     The  action  thus  entered  upon 

80 


•  SO  VTH  WA&Jf* 


THE    G  L.OB  K  'I'll  RAT  K  E, 

liA.V  K.VIJ)}'. .  SOVT&WARK; 

i-om  a  D<-uvrine  in  the  celebrated  illustrated  eoj> 
In  Fourteen  Volumes  larn  Folio, 

or  J»jcj,-2y,i.yt:y  jLOjrjtojv.' 

Beoucal  lied  by  tin-  late  .John  Cliarlt-s  Oowlr  KiqC 
To  fhe  British  Museum, 


G-LOBJS  THJSATK.E 


Dramatic  Poetry 

is  fatally  controlled,  both  as  to  its  occasion  and 
issue;  in  no  part  of  literary  art  is  the  rule  laid 
down  so  rigorously  as  here  that  the  action  shall 
be  made  up  of  a  chain  of  events  linked  together 
by  causal  necessity.  To  uncover  this  chain 
and  show  its  connection  is  the  province  of  the 
reason.  Every  extraneous  and  unrelated  ele- 
ment is  cut  away;  all  is  simplified  to  the  point 
that  the  spectator  must  be  convinced  that  the 
result  obtained  in  the  issue  was  inevitable  and 
could  not  possibly  have  been  otherwise  than  it 
was.  The  power  which  is  invoked  is  fate;  it  is 
a  power  that  clings  to,  weighs  upon  and  drags 
down  its  prey,  be  he  never  so  strong  and  noble; 
it  is  a  manifestation  of  the  unsearchable  law 
of  human  destiny.  This  is  tragedy  as  it  was 
first  conceived  and  practised  by  the  Greek 
genius,  and  it  remains  unchanged  in  its  essential 
conception.  The  discords  that  arise  in  life  are 
infinite  in  variety,  and  the  kinds  of  tragic  con- 
flict as  various  as  the  combinations  of  the  will 
with  life.  The  simplest  collision  is  with  exter- 
nal circumstance;  the  most  complex  is  that 
when  the  will  is  internally  divided  against  itself 
by  some  fact  of  character;  and  the  two  forms 
may    be    combined    in    the    same    play.     The 

81 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

working  of  fate  in  the  play  may  be  attended 
with  all  degrees  of  interpretation  from  clearness 
to  mystery;  it  is  most  clear  when  it  is  ethical, 
it  is  most  mysterious  when  it  transcends  any 
scheme  of  justice  known  to  men.  Fate  into 
which  a  retributory  element  enters,  pursuing  a 
sin-stricken  house  like  that  of  Atreus,  is  intel- 
ligible to  the  conscience;  but  tragedy  is  not 
restrained  within  these  limits  in  art  any  more 
than  in  life,  and  fate  in  proportion  as  it  sinks 
into  facts  of  circumstance,  such  as  heredity,  and 
blends  with  a  generous  nature  such  as  Hamlet 
or  Othello,  becomes  mysterious,  a  part  of  the 
unsolved  spectacle  of  life.  In  its  progress  as 
an  art  tragedy  seems  to  leave  ethics  behind  and 
to  become  insoluble. 

The  Greek  drama  is  the  best  introduction  to 
the  study  of  tragedy.  It  presents  several  points 
of  advantage  in  inducting  the  reader  into  the 
nature  of  what  is  attempted,  the  point  of  view, 
the  modes  of  evolving  the  action,  the  resources 
of  the  theatrical  representation.  In  the  first 
place,  it  is  extraordinarily  simple  in  its  state- 
ment of  the  tragic  problem,  using  plain  ele- 
ments in  the  tale,  few  characters  and  well 
defined    situations.     The    simplicity    of    Greek 

82 


Dramatic  Poetry 

tragedies,  indeed,  strikes  the  modern  reader 
as  paucity;  the  action,  the  thought,  the  mental 
and  moral  substance  of  the  play  are  almost 
skeletonized  in  their  obviousness;  and  for  the 
aesthetic  effect,  it  is  evident,  reliance  was  largely 
placed  on  the  presentation  with  its  open-air 
atmosphere,  its  sculpturesque  grouping  and  its 
choral  accompaniments.  In  the  second  place, 
the  prepossession  of  the  play  with  ethics  is 
marked.  The  Greek  genius  undertook  by  a 
natural  inclination  to  impose  an  ethical  mean- 
ing on  life  as  known  in  the  legend  of  the  race; 
it  would  find  moral  harmony  in  the  dealings  of 
the  divine  with  mankind,  and  beginning  with 
iEschylus  it  exalted  the  conception  of  righteous- 
ness as  an  element  in  fatality,  and  ending  with 
Euripides  it  was  still  concerned  with  the  moral 
aspect  of  human  affairs.  Aristotle  reduced  the 
practise  of  the  dramatists  to  a  theory,  and  simply 
excluded  from  the  art  all  such  representation 
as  could  not  be  rationalized  for  the  conscience, 
on  the  ground  that  such  representations  would 
be  impiety  to  the  gods.  The  ethical  school  of 
criticism  of  the  drama  still  rests  substantially 
on  these  prepossessions,  inherited  from  the 
Greeks,  which  presumed  a  law  of  righteousness 

83 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

manifest  in  the  tragedies  that  befall  mankind. 
The  Greek  drama  is  also  convenient  for  study 
because  it  exemplifies  with  great  lucidity  and 
speed  in  development  the  evolution  of  the  art, 
not  only  in  its  emergence  from  its  early  state  as 
a  choral  act  of  religion  into  a  more  theatrical 
representation  of  individuals  and  their  relations, 
but  also  in  its  movement  from  a  rough  and 
broad  typical  treatment,  as  in  iEschylus,  through 
the  perfect  balance  of  Sophocles  to  the  extreme 
individualization  of  Euripides;  in  these  dram- 
atists the  normal  evolution  of  every  fine  art 
is  illustrated  by  the  example  of  tragedy  passing 
from  a  lofty  and  abstract  idealism  to  the  various 
forms  of  realism  and  romanticism.  Besides 
these  three  marked  traits  of  simplicity,  ethical 
quality,  and  artistic  development,  the  Greek 
drama  is  also  distinguished  by  great  interest 
inherent  in  itself.  The  subjects  were  narrowly 
limited  by  tradition  to  the  group  of  legends  and 
tales  that  contained  the  religious  and  historic 
imagination  of  the  race  already  embodied  in 
great  events  and  surpassing  characters;  the 
action  is  consequently  always  one  that  has 
distinction  in  itself,  and  the  playing  of  the 
dramatist's  thought  about  the   action  was   the 

84 


Dramatic  Poetry 

point  of  novelty  in  each  new  representation; 
the  drama  is  thus  a  great  text  freshly  commented 
upon  and  interpreted  by  the  contemporary 
spirit  of  Greece  in  the  person  of  her  best  masters 
of  poetic  genius.  It  is  true  that  the  external 
part  of  life,  the  action,  holds  the  first  place  in 
interest,  and  this  is  a  part  of  the  native  sim- 
plicity of  Greek  drama;  it  is  primarily  events 
that  are  to  be  set  forth;  the  purpose  of  the  poet 
is  to  draw  forth  their  law  as  intelligible  to  the 
conscience.  The  character  interest  is  different 
from  that  of  modern  tragedy,  and  seldom 
admits  of  that  special  trait  of  internal  develop- 
ment which  belongs  predominantly  to  later  art. 
But  the  characters,  though  fixed,  are  equal  to 
the  events  in  which  their  fortunes  are  engaged, 
worthy  of  them,  and  surpassing  in  human 
interest.  Their  mere  names  have  served  for 
ages  as  types  both  of  human  nature  and  of 
tragic  destiny.  Agamemnon  and  Clytemnestra, 
Antigone,  Orestes,  Medea,  Hippolytus,  and 
a  score  of  others  make  a  list  that,  if  Shakespeare 
be  excepted,  no  other  literature  is  able  to  ap- 
proach in  definite  and  powerful  impressiveness ; 
they  are  for  the  imagination  what  Plutarch's 
men  are  for  history,  a  gallery  without  a  rival. 

85 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

It  is  also  true  that  Greek  tragedy,  if  it  be  thor- 
oughly read,  presents  a  greater  variety  of 
interest  for  romantic  pleasure  as  well  as  for 
intellectual  activity  than  is  commonly  thought; 
its  poetic  riches,  as  Milton  well  knew,  are  un- 
told; there  is,  indeed,  no  single  body  of  litera- 
ture comparable  to  it  even  when  read,  as  there 
was  never  its  equal  for  blended  aesthetic  pleasures 
when  acted  under  the  pure  skies  of  Athens. 

For  the  English  reader,  nevertheless,  the 
natural  way  to  appreciate  dramatic  poetry  is 
to  read  Shakespeare.  He  is  one  of  those 
authors  so  greatly  assimilative,  so  like  to  life 
itself,  that  no  preparation  is  needed  to  read  him 
beyond  mere  living  from  the  time  that  boyhood 
awakes  to  life.  It  is  always  wise  to  approach 
literature  by  reading  one  author  much  rather 
than  many  authors  a  little;  and  to  read  Shakes- 
peare thoroughly  so  shapes  and  informs  the 
mind  that  no  part  of  imaginative  literature  will 
thereafter  be  dark  to  it.  If  it  be  impossible  to 
assign  him  such  a  place  in  English  education  as 
Homer  filled  in  Greece,  his  works  are  neverthe- 
less a  sort  of  secular  Bible  for  English-speaking 
peoples,  and  express  the  English  apprehension 
of  life  in  the  large  both  in   the  way  of  ideal 

86 


Dramatic  Poetry 

types  of  character,  of  romantic  or  profound 
courses  of  events  and  of  practical  wisdom  formu- 
lated in  pregnant  phrase.  To  know  Shakespeare 
well  is  to  have  sufficient  depth  in  literary  edu- 
cation though  not  sufficient  range,  since  he  was 
of  his  age  as  well  as  for  all  time.  Such  an  edu- 
cation requires  to  be  supplemented;  yet  in  the 
English  drama  it  is  well-nigh  exhaustive.  At 
the  first  glance  it  is  apparent  that  with  Shake- 
speare the  Greek  drama  has  been  left  far  behind. 
It  is  not  characteristic  of  Shakespeare  to  be 
either  simple  or  ethical.  He  had,  back  of  his 
dramas,  for  subject-matter  English  and  Roman 
history  and  the  romance  tales  of  the  continent; 
this  body  of  tradition  was  not  comparable  to 
Greek  legend  in  having  been  subjected  to  the 
rationalizing  power  of  the  imagination  through 
long  time,  and  it  consequently  was  more  mis- 
cellaneous, inchoate  and  undigested,  mixed  of 
heterogeneous  and  incompatible  elements,  less 
pure  as  material  for  the  creative  reason  that 
genius  exercises.  Shakespeare,  too,  was  him- 
self less  penetrated  with  the  Greek  instinct  for 
ethical  order,  for  harmony,  in  life;  he  was  of  a 
northern  stock,  and  what  to  a  Greek  would 
have    seemed    barbaric   habits    of   mind   were 

87 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

still  implicit  in  his  nature,  in  his  thought  and 
feeling.  The  world,  besides,  had  long  broken 
old  molds  of  ethical  theory,  and  in  expanding 
had  included  new  experience  of  manifold  variety. 
Life  as  it  came  to  Shakespeare's  knowledge  was 
a  greater  and  subtler  thing  than  it  had  been  in 
antiquity;  it  was  full  of  new  and  unmeasured 
elements;  it  did  not  suggest  harmony,  it  did  not 
enforce  on  the  mind  any  ethical  law  controlling 
its  phenomena,  it  offered  rather  at  the  best  an 
opportunity  for  moral  exploration  and  mental 
experiment.  These  are  some  of  the  reasons 
why  Shakespeare's  plays  cannot  be  described 
as  ethical  in  the  old  and  severe  sense;  they  dis- 
play ethical  meaning  only  partially  and  often 
ignore  that  side  of  life;  they  are  supremely  con- 
cerned only  with  the  representation  of  life, 
however  confused  and  mysterious  a  phase  it 
may  wear  to  the  moral  judgment. 

The  reader  must  therefore  be  prepared  to 
abandon  that  strict  idea  of  tragedy  as  the 
rationalization  of  life  under  an  ethical  con- 
ception, and  often  to  accept  it  here  as  the  spec- 
tacle of  mere  fate,  the  law  of  human  destiny 
manifest  in  examples,  but  seen  rather  than 
understood.     The  laxer  hold  of  any  informing 

88 


Dramatic  Poetry 

rational  principle  in  the  play,  this  free  move- 
ment of  life  in  it,  this  grasp  of  the  problem 
without  eliminating  insoluble  elements  belongs 
to  Shakespeare,  and  is  a  part  of  the  breadth 
and  comprehe.nsiveness  of  his  method.  It  is 
because  of  this,  together  with  other  cognate 
qualities,  that  critics  often  speak  of  his  genius 
as  being  half -barbaric.  He  includes  much  more 
than  art  would  include,  nor  is  he  careful  to 
attend  to  the  necessities  of  art;  he  created  with 
his  whole  power  of  man  rather  than  by  any 
special  faculty  in  a  piecemeal  way,  and  hence 
his  work  departs  from  art  but  it  always  departs 
in  the  direction  of  more  life.  To  familiarize 
the  mind  with  his  habits,  it  is  best  to  follow 
him  in  his  growth  from  play  to  play,  and  so  to 
grow  with  him  into  lr's  practise,  moods,  and 
changes  of  interest,  style  and  meditation;  it  is 
a  richly  developing  life  that  will  be  so  led.  The 
histories,  even  those  in  which  his  hand  is  doubt- 
ful or  partial,  have  the  good  of  introducing  one 
to  the  Elizabethan  theater  and  accustoming  the 
reader  to  its  conventions,  its  kinds  of  interest, 
its  atmosphere;  and  with  Richard  II,  Richard 
III,  Henry  V,  King  John,  Shakespeare  already 
begins   to   be  greatly   known;   the   other   plays 

89 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

follow  in  their  order,  the  romantic  comedies, 
the  tragedies  and  Roman  plays,  the  romances, 
as  they  were  chronologically  written;  and  as 
each  one  is  mastered  and  understood,  so  far  as 
the  reader  at  the  time  can  appropriate  it,  the 
nature  of  Shakespeare's  art  and  the  power  of 
his  genius  will  open,  and  the  wide  meaning  of 
the  plays,  which  are  a  blended  product  of  both 
art  and  genius,  will  be  more  fully  comprehended. 
One  should  read  the  plays,  and  not  indulge  too 
fondly  in  the  comment.  If  one  is  led  on  to  further 
study  and  meditation,  the  Variorum  edition  of 
Furness  offers  every  needed  facility  and  is 
library  enough;  with  Shakespeare,  never  forget, 
"the  play's  the  thing  "  The  question  of  periods, 
the  Elizabethan  vocabulary,  stage  history,  may 
take  care  of  themselves  for  the  time  being;  so 
may  the  sources  of  the  plots  and  analysis  of  the 
characters;  so  may  the  symbolical  interpretation 
of  both;  life  is  not  long  enough  to  read  Shake- 
speare in  that  way,  if  one  has  other  business; 
but  a  man,  even  much  occupied  with  many 
affairs,  may  read  all  Shakespeare's  plays  thor- 
oughly and  intelligently  with  true  appreciation, 
and  acquire  an  excellent  literary  education 
thereby. 

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Dramatic  Poetry 

Shakespeare  suffices  singly  so  much  more  than 
other  authors  because  he  includes  within  the 
work  of  one  personality  so  extraordinary  a 
range  of  dramatic  art.  The  Greek  drama  in 
comparison  with  the  Shakespearian  is  as  the 
beautiful  but  confined  Mediterranean  world  to 
the  world  of  the  world  navigators.  He  adds 
to  tragedy  the  province  of  comedy,  but  the  ex- 
pansion of  the  field  is  much  more  than  that; 
he  so  treats  the  story  that  is  the  nucleus  of  the 
play  as  to  make  it  a  theme  of  life  as  various  as  it 
is  universal.  He  presents  many  kinds  of  life, 
environments,  atmospheres,  without  ceasing  to 
be  great  in  the  treatment  of  them;  in  reading 
him  one  is  not  confined  to  history  or  tragedy 
or  comedy  or  pastoral  or  any  mode  of  life  or 
art,  but  may  pass  from  one  to  the  other  and 
still  remain  under  the  sway  of  one  power;  in 
other  words,  life  here  retains  its  individuality, 
its  being  one  life,  without  losing  its  diversity 
of  scene,  business,  and  function.  Humanity  is, 
in  a  sense,  harmonized  by  being  thus  held  within 
the  limits  of  his  temperament.  In  no  dramatist 
is  there  so  large  a  geography  of  the  world  of  the 
mind.  It  is  true  that  his  Athens  is  not  the  city 
of  Theseus  nor  his  Rome  the  city  of  Coriolanus 

91 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

or  of  Caesar,  nor  England  the  England  of  Lear 
nor  Scotland  the  Scotland  of  Macbeth;  yet  each 
is  in  turn  really  Athenian,  Roman,  British,  and 
Scotch,  and  gives  a  true  illusion  of  historic 
phases  of  life  each  at  one  with  itself;  and,  be- 
sides, there  are  the  fairy  world,  the  witches,  the 
dream  world  of  The  Tempest,  the  world  of 
Arden,  of  Venice  and  Verona,  each  yielding  a 
true  illusion  of  imaginative  phases  of  life  simi- 
larly at  harmony  within  its  own  domain.  The 
expansion  given  to  life  by  the  revelation  of 
each  new  play  comes  with  the  effect  of  mental 
and  imaginative  discovery;  it  is  an  invigorating 
shock  and  adds  new  horizons  to  the  reader's 
consciousness  of  life.  If  it  is  a  chief  end  of 
literary  study  to  reveal  new  interests  in  life,  to 
multiply  the  points  of  contact  between  the  mind 
and  human  experience,  to  open  out  new  ways 
of  thought  and  feeling,  Shakespeare  serves  this 
end  with  a  stimulation,  an  abundance  and  sur- 
prise, and  with  a  perfection  in  surrendering  the 
new  world  into  the  hands  and  comprehension 
of  the  reader,  entirely  beyond  comparison  with 
others.  It  is,  however,  not  so  much  by  the  extent, 
variety  and  freshness  of  the  worlds  of  life  which 
he  evokes  that  he  informs  and  shapes  the  mind 

92 


Dramatic  Poetry 

and  gives  it  great  horizons,  as  it  is  by  the  free 
play  of  life  in  its  element  which  he  uncovers  in 
the  action  and  the  characters,  whether  it  be 
tragic  or  mirthful,  in  the  lofty  or  the  low  persons 
of  the  drama,  flushed  with  passion,  crossed 
with  melancholy  or  salt  with  cynicism,  —  what- 
ever it  be,  it  is  life  in  its  own  element  and  un- 
confined.  Fate  rules  in  it,  and  most  plainly 
in  the  greatest  dramatic  moments,  but  it  is 
Shakespeare's  fate,  the  unsearchable  law  of 
human  destiny  that  escapes  moral  statement 
and  is  more  largely  if  more  blindly  conceived 
than  in  old  days.  In  Lear  and  its  attendant 
great  tragedies,  pity  and  terror,  the  tragic  motives, 
are  at  their  height  partly  because  of  the  paralysis 
of  the  reason  in  view  of  the  spectacle ;  the  moral 
order  has  vanished  and  gone  forever,  and  no 
power  of  art  can  bring  it  back  by  skill  in  the 
solution  of  the  action.  Fate  such  as  this  makes 
the  greatness  of  the  passionate  plays,  and  in 
lesser  forms  it  is  present  in  all  as  the  spirit 
abiding  in  life  that  has  its  will  in  the  end,  the 
genius  of  the  play.  Shakespeare  never  loses 
touch  with  this  mystic  element  in  life,  and  he  is 
fond  of  putting  it  forth  as  an  enchantment, 
especially  in  the  happier  phases  of  his  art;  the 

93 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

ways  in  which  life  escapes  understanding  are 
in  no  author  so  large  a  part  of  the  substance, 
the  charm,  one  may  almost  say  the  meaning. 
It  is  thus  that  his  art  transcends  Greek  art,  and 
incarnates  the  modern  spirit.  Though  his  art 
would  be  described  by  its  traits  as  belonging  to 
the  Renaissance,  the  modern  spirit  was  born 
there  like  Athene  from  the  head  of  Zeus.  No 
other  author  gives  forth  that  spirit  with  like 
power  and  light,  illuminating  the  self-conscious- 
ness of  humanity,  its  realization  of  human 
nature  and  human  life.  To  read  Shakespeare 
is  not,  as  is  sometimes  said,  to  feudalize  the 
imagination  and  befool  the  mind  with  aristo- 
cratic and  dead  ideals ;  but  to  be  myriad -minded, 
like  Shakespeare,  is  to  be  modern-minded, 
ever  to  comprehend  and  interpret  more  of  life 
with  an  increasing  sense  of  its  insoluble  ele- 
ments, to  live  in  a  world  of  new  discovery, 
of  information,  of  revelation  with  suspense  of 
judgment,  to  become  more  tolerant,  more  hu- 
mane, with  a  serener  view  of  the  blended  terror 
and  enchantment  of  the  scene,  the  golden  days 
and  doubtful  fates  of  life,  nowhere  so  romanti- 
cally, passionately  and  wisely  bodied  forth  as 
on  Shakespeare's  page.    The  way  to  read  Shakes- 

94 


Dramatic  Poetry 

peare  is  to  take  the  dramas  which  most  attract 
and  interest  the  reader  and  become  thoroughly 
familiar  with  those,  neglecting  the  others  until 
their  time  shall  come. 

All  other  drama  pales  beside  Shakespeare's. 
The  revival  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  that  was 
an  element  in  the  romantic  movement  of  the 
last  century  in  England  brought  back  into  view 
the  entire  stage  of  that  era  and  also  its  historic 
forerunners  in  English  dramatic  life.  The 
pre-Shakespearians,  nevertheless,  have  little  in- 
trinsic interest  except  of  an  historical  kind;  they 
live,  even  his  great  contemporaries  live,  largely 
by  the  reflected  light  of  Shakespeare  in  the 
penumbra  of  his  fame.  Each  has  qualities  of 
distinction,  vigor,  grace,  charm,  wit,  picturesque- 
ness,  intellectual  power,  dramatic  skill;  some 
have  one,  some  another  of  these  traits;  but  in 
no  one  of  them  is  the  combination  so  happy  or 
the  work  so  excellent  as  to  give  their  plays  the 
quality  that  makes  literature  enduringly  power- 
ful as  an  expression  of  life  in  the  ideal.  Mar- 
lowe alone  of  the  predecessors  and  Jonson 
alone  of  the  contemporaries  arouse  other  than 
a  scholar's  interest;  such  writers  as  Greene  and 

Peele  and  Lodge  are  negligible;  and  the  whole 

95 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

mass  of  moralities  and  miracle  plays,  though 
historically  valuable,  and  often  touched  by  a 
happy  strain  of  human  truth  or  picturesqueness, 
is  as  literature  a  thing  of  naught.  The  post- 
Shakespearians  have  greater  literary  skill,  but 
they  had  lost  in  the  wholeness  of  their  grasp  on 
life  and  present  the  traits  of  a  decadence,  even 
in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  and  more  markedly 
in  Webster  and  Ford.  It  is  possible  to  become 
greatly  interested  in  some  one  or  other  of  the 
more  famous  plays,  even  to  reach  a  degree  of 
enthusiasm,  but  these  are  special  experiences 
of  the  reader  and  depend  much  on  tempera- 
ment and  accident.  In  general,  Lamb's  Speci- 
mens and  what  he  said  of  them  are  sufficient  to 
satisfy  curiosity  or  open  the  way  to  experiment, 
and  Lowell's  lectures  on  these  dramatists  give 
all  needful  information  and  show  at  the  same 
time  a  diminishing  interest  in  the  writers  which 
is  the  sign  of  a  wise  literary  choice.  The  later 
history  of  English  drama  is  comparatively 
barren  ground.  The  Restoration  drama  is  es- 
sentially prosaic  and  an  expression  of  English 
genius  the  least  admirable  either  for  sound  taste 
or  fine  feeling  in  English  literary  annals;  it  is 
only   for   the   curious.     The   prose   comedy   of 

96 


Dramatic  Poetry 

Congreve,  and  later  of  Goldsmith  and  Sheridan, 
is  the  best  in  the  language,  and  should  be  read, 
as  novels  or  essays  are  read,  upon  a  lower 
level  of  interest  than  dramatic  poetry.  The 
choral  dramas  of  Milton  and  Shelley  open  a 
new  source  and  outflow  of  English  genius  in  its 
noblest  forms,  but  they  are  rather  lyrical  than 
dramatic.  The  nineteenth  century  produced 
no  great  drama  in  English,  though  occasionally, 
as  in  Manfred,  it  gave  forth  a  work  of  dramatic 
intensity,  or  as  in  some  of  Browning's  poems  it 
produced  drama  in  a  fragmentary  form  of 
romance  and  passion.  On  great  lines,  and  for 
the  reader  who  is  not  limited  to  dramatic  in- 
terests, it  remains  true  that  Shakespeare,  sup- 
plemented by  a  play  here  and  there,  suffices  for 
dramatic  reading,  and  after  him  Milton  and 
Shelley,  in  their  choral  dramas,  are  the  great 
masters  in  English  of  the  truth  that  drama  can 
put  forth  by  poetic  imagination. 

The  approach  to  foreign  drama,  except  the 
Greek,  is  best  made  by  the  way  of  comedy, 
especially  by  Moliere  and  Goldoni.  Foreign 
tragedy,  whether  French,  German,  or  Italian,  is 
very  remote  from  the  reader.  Spanish  drama,  a 
form  intrinsically  as  interesting  in  many  ways 

97 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

as  the  Greek  and  the  Shakespearian  and  making 
with  them  a  third  definite  form  of  this  art  in  its 
supreme  practise,  is  still  more  remote  from  the 
English  reader  and  requires  for  its  appreciation 
great  cultural  preparation  and  much  plasticity 
in  the  literary  habits  of  the  mind.  Such  read- 
ing as  Calderon  or  the  classic  French  drama  or 
even  Goethe  and  Schiller  is  for  scholars. 
Foreign  drama  may  now  be  more  profitably 
approached  by  the  contemporary  forms,  Scan- 
dinavian, German,  French  and  Italian,  than  by 
its  older  historic  examples.  These  plays  are 
filled  with  a  modern  spirit  that  is  becoming 
more  and  more  cosmopolitan  and  pervasive, 
even  among  English-speaking  people;  the  sub- 
stance of  them  is  not  narrowly  national,  but 
universal  in  interest  and  in  presentation;  and 
the  needful  critical  aids  to  assist  the  reader  are 
plentiful  and  accessible. 

The  drama,  as  an  artistic  form,  is  of  course 
much  more  complex  than  has  been  indicated; 
other  things  besides  literature  enter  into  it  in 
its  theatrical  representation,  and  the  appre- 
ciation of  it  as  a  spectacle  involves  other  prepa- 
ration and  rests  on  other  principles  in  addition 
to  what  belongs  to  it  as  literature.     How  great 

98 


Dramatic  Poetry 

a  part  the  scenic  and  choral  arrangement 
played  in  the  Greek  drama  has  been  already 
pointed  out,  and  in  the  modern  drama  the  im- 
portance of  the  theatrical  elements  is  often  such 
that  as  an  art  of  the  stage  the  play  need  not  be 
literature  at  all.  The  scant  resources  of  the 
Elizabethan  stage  threw  a  heavier  burden  on 
the  literature  of  the  text  and  brought  the  purely 
mental  reproduction  of  life  to  the  fore;  and  the 
power  of  Shakespeare  as  a  writer  is  due  to  the 
genius  he  had  for  this  mental  representation  of 
life  without  much  aid  from  material  conditions. 
It  follows  from  this  that  his  drama  when  read 
merely  and  not  enacted  yields  a  vision  and  a 
realization  of  life  beyond  that  of  theatrical 
writers  or  playwrights  generally,  so  vivid  and 
intense  as  to  set  the  plays  apart,  not  as  closet 
dramas  so-called  to  be  read  in  the  study,  but 
as  literature  which  gives  up  its  full  contents  to 
the  eye  of  the  mind  unaided  by  the  scene. 
Many,  indeed,  believe,  as  Lamb  did,  that  such 
private  reading  is  more  satisfactory  than  any 
public  representation,  inasmuch  as  the  presen- 
tation on  the  stage  falls  short  of  the  scene  and 
also  of  the  actors  that  the  imagination  of  the 
reader  supplies.     The  stage  craft  of  Shakespeare 

99 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

was  of  great  assistance  to  him  in  casting 
the  action,  in  handling  its  development  and  in 
suggesting  modes  of  arrangement  and  display; 
but  his  poetic  genius,  achieving  a  vivid  repre- 
sentation of  life  by  purely  mental  means,  made 
the  plays  great  literature.  The  function  of 
dramatic  poetry,  in  comparison  with  epic  poetry 
which  presents  life  socially  and  by  a  method 
of  extension,  is  to  set  life  forth  individually  and 
by  a  method  of  intension;  the  drama  is  an 
intensive  rendering  of  life  by  individual  ex- 
amples of  human  fortune  which  compress  the 
truth  of  life  into  a  brief  abstract.  Poetic 
dramatic  genius  by  its  powers  of  ideality  con- 
denses such  general  truth  —  the  law  of  life  — 
whether  in  action  or  character,  and  the  greater 
the  condensation  the  more  brilliant  and  intense 
is  the  effect.  Dramatic  poetry  involves  the 
presentation  of  life  in  its  supreme  moments,  its 
surpassing  characters  and  its  greatest  problems, 
because  it  is  in  these  that  the  intensity  it  seeks 
resides  and  the  truth  it  would  express  is  most 
vividly  condensed.  In  tragedy,  especially,  the 
most  obstinate  evil,  the  most  mysterious  dis- 
pensations, the  darkest  moral  problems,  are  set 
forth;    what    life    contains    of    pessimism    and 

100 


Dramatic  Poetry 

ignorance  is  here  heaped  up;  the  theme  indeed 
is  often  such  an  outbreak  of  passion,  such  crime 
or  sacrilege,  such  violation  as  is  seldom  treated 
except  in  tragedy,  and  dramatic  poetry  has  a 
certain  peculiar  power  to  treat  such  tales  and 
characters  as  phenomena  of  life  and  passion 
still  within  the  pale  of  understanding,  and  even 
of  sympathy,  because  human.  The  tragic  imag- 
ination, when  morbid  and  exclusive,  seeks  such 
themes;  and  if,  as  in  Greece,  they  exist  in  the 
great  tradition  of  the  race,  they  are  deeply 
meditated,  as  in  the  stories  of  (Edipus,  Phaedra 
and  the  Orestean  trilogy.  In  modern  tragedy 
one  sups  on  horrors  quite  as  much  as  in  the 
palace  of  the  Atridse,  though  with  a  difference; 
yet  it  is  the  same  presence  of  the  terrible  in  hu- 
man fate,  of  the  issue  of  evil  in  sacrifice,  expia- 
tion, suffering  for  the  innocent  and  tragic  death 
for  the  guilty,  it  is  the  pity  of  it  even  in  lives  of 
wrongful  passion,  that  loads  the  theme  in  the 
great  English  plays  as  in  the  old  Greek  ex- 
amples. If  the  great  English  themes  as  sym- 
bols of  life  seem  nearer  to  reality  in  the 
deepest  consciousness  of  modern  times,  the 
Greek  themes  in  their  own  age  were  nearer  to 
that  consciousness  in  the  antique;  the  supreme 

101 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

crises  of  action  and  passion,  of  man  doing  and 
suffering,  do  not  change  in  substance  but  in 
the  kind  of  interest  taken  in  them  and  the  in- 
terpretation given.  Tragic  themes  are  not  in- 
stances of  crime  but  instances  of  nature;  it  is 
because  they  are  so  regarded  that  they  are 
tolerated  by  the  contemplating  mind;  the  will 
and  responsibility  of  the  spectator  are  not 
roused  because  there  is  no  possibility  of  his 
interference,  and  he  is  not  called  on  to  give 
judgment  or  to  correct,  but  only  to  observe,  to 
know.  This  detachment  from  the  practical 
sphere  is  a  condition  of  tragic  pleasure,  which 
lies  largely  in  the  illumination  of  life  given,  in 
mere  knowledge;  in  the  antique  world  it  was 
predominantly  moral  and  religious  knowledge; 
in  the  modern  world  it  is  perhaps  mainly  psycho- 
logical and  philosophic  knowledge.  Philosophy, 
therefore,  in  a  special  way  belongs  to  dramatic 
poetry  and  is  its  natural  ally  in  deepening 
appreciation  of  it,  as  biography  is  of  lyrical  and 
history  of  narrative  poetry.  The  drama  ad- 
dresses the  reason,  and  endeavors  to  enlighten 
the  understanding  with  regard  to  the  law  of 
human  destiny;  it  is  essentially  philosophical, 
disclosing  the  abstract  of  truth,  the  constitution 

102 


Dramatic  Poetry 

of  the  human  world,  the  law  of  character  and 
event.  It  wears  this  aspect  the  more  plainly  in 
proportion  as  it  is  great,  more  simply  repre- 
sentative, more  profoundly  interpretative;  and 
tragedy  holds  the  first  place  in  it  because  the 
problems  there  probed  engage  philosophical  in- 
terest most  deeply. 

Tragedy,  however,  does  not  monopolize  the 
philosophical  meaning  of  dramatic  poetry.  In 
Shelley's  choral  drama,  such  as  the  Prometheus 
Unbound,  the  intellectual  abstraction  is  the 
fundamental  substance  of  the  poem;  the  charac- 
ters are  themselves  allegorical  and  in  their 
mythical  personality  stand  for  principles  of  life, 
while  the  action  itself  is  a  symbol  of  human 
progress.  The  play  is  merely  a  pictorial  woof 
of  music  and  light,  a  fleeting  vision  of  lovely 
scenes,  unless  its  intellectual  element  of  ethical 
thought  be  clearly  grasped  to  give  it  meaning; 
and  it  is  in  this  significance  to  the  mind,  a 
philosophical  significance,  that  the  play  becomes 
great,  the  only  great  play  of  the  English  genius 
in  poetry  in  modern  times.  It  is  a  reconcilia- 
tion play,  conceived  in  Shakespeare's  last  man- 
ner and  as  such  is  cognate  to  The  Tempest  as 
well   as  by  its   lyricism.     The  division  of  the 

103 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

thought  from  the  characters  is,  perhaps,  too 
much  felt,  the  philosophy  is  too  explicit  and 
separable;  but  the  theme,  transforming  the 
Revolution  into  the  Millennium,  is  a  great 
argument  set  forth  dramatically  and  addressed 
to  the  reason.  The  most  interesting  drama, 
however,  apart  from  tragedy,  is  that  in  which 
life  is  set  forth  with  the  effect  of  a  dream,  of  a 
life  that  might  be,  of  which  the  best  examples 
in  English  are  the  plays  of  Shakespeare's  middle 
period  and  his  last  romances.  They  are  charac- 
terized by  a  predominant  lyricism  in  the  treat- 
ment. The  lyrical  and  epical  elements  in  his 
genius  were  the  first  to  come  to  maturity;  in  the 
English  and  Roman  plays  the  epical  element  is 
plain,  and  the  lyrical  element  appears  in  the 
early  comedies,  reaching  its  greatest  purity  and 
height  in  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  The 
dream  atmosphere  of  this  play  gives,  perhaps, 
the  type;  but  something  of  the  same  quality  is 
in  Love's  Labour's  Lost,  at  the  beginning  of  his 
career,  and  is  the  source  of  the  profound  fas- 
cination of  such  ripe  comedies  as  Twelfth  Nig}vty 
As  You  Like  It  and  The  Merchant  of  Venice. 
The  dramatic  method  is  the  same  here  as  always, 
—  an   intensive  representation  of  life  by   indi- 

104 


Dramatic  Poetry 

vidual  examples;  but  here  it  is  the  romance  of 
life  in  its  felicities  that  is  set  forth,  with  only 
such  saddening  as  more  endears  it.  In  the 
three  last  romances,  Cymbeline,  A  Winter's 
Tale  and  The  Tempest,  the  dream  is  still  the 
atmosphere  of  the  play,  but  the  felicity  is  en- 
hanced by  the  darker  elements  that  enter  into 
the  themes,  and  the  hand  that  wrote  these 
dramas  is  one  that  had  been  dipped  deep  in 
tragedy.  They  are  the  climax  of  dramatic  art 
in  England  as  an  art  that  gives  pleasure  to  the 
mind  and  also  renders  up  wisdom.  In  other 
authors,  too,  it  is  the  lyrical  treatment  of  life  in 
this  dreamful  way  that  most  attracts  the  reader; 
in  Jonson,  in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  in  Milton's 
ComuSy  the  pastoral  and  masque  elements  are 
those  on  which  the  memory  most  dwells.  After 
tragedy  this  lyrical  drama  of  Shelley,  Shakes- 
peare and  Milton  must  be  reckoned  the  greatest 
achievement  in  English,  and  the  human  philos- 
ophy which  it  gives  out  in  forms  of  beauty  is  a 
high-water  mark  of  the  wisdom  that  literature 
reaches. 

Poetry  in  its  main  forms,  lyrical,  narrative 
and  dramatic,  has  now  been  touched  upon  with 
a  view  to  suggest  its  nature,  the  way  of  approach 

105 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

to  it,  and  the  spirit  that  should  attend  the  reader. 
It  is  obvious  that  the  divisional  marks  are 
terms  of  convenience;  there  are  lyrical  and 
epical  elements  in  drama,  dramatic  elements  in 
lyric  and  epic;  poetry  treats  life  as  a  whole,  and 
its  power  is  integral,  one  power,  whether  put 
forth  lyrically,  epically,  or  dramatically.  Yet 
it  is  true  that  lyrical  poetry  mainly  exercises  the 
emotions;  the  epic  discloses  life  in  its  extension 
in  the  social  sphere;  the  drama  embodies  life 
intensively;  and  in  each  case  severally,  biog- 
raphy, or  the  love  of  the  author,  history,  or  a 
sense  of  the  life  of  the  race,  and  philosophy,  or 
an  interpretation  of  human  nature,  are  the 
natural  aids  to  appreciation  in  each  kind.  The 
end  of  poetry  is  to  illuminate  life  from  within 
the  consciousness  of  the  reader,  to  realize  there 
his  own  emotions,  the  scene  of  life  in  the  world, 
the  constitution  of  passion  and  fate  in  man  and 
his  circumstances,  to  make  him  acquainted 
with  the  nature  of  man  in  him.  Progress  in 
this  knowledge  is  usually  more  rapid  in  poetry 
than  in  prose,  because  of  the  condensation  of 
life  achieved  by  poetry,  the  use  of  the  economies 
of  art  and  the  methods  of  reason  in  statement, 
and  the  emotional  vividness  that  belongs  to  all 

106 


Dramatic  Poetry 

poetic  modes.  In  a  field  so  immense  as  poetic 
literature  presents,  much  must  necessarily  be 
neglected;  the  safest  guide  is  the  reader's  in- 
stinct, the  choice  made  by  his  own  tempera- 
ment and  powers.  The  degree  of  appreciation 
will  necessarily  vary  from  the  least  to  the  most 
complete;  but  it  need  not  be  complete  in  order 
to  be  useful.  The  greatest  books  are  those  in 
which  one  grows  the  most  and  the  longest. 
The  end  being  to  know  human  life,  what  man 
in  his  essence  is,  what  he  has  been,  what  he  is 
capable  of,  there  is  no  goal  to  the  study;  and  the 
further  one  proceeds  in  it,  the  more,  perhaps, 
he  is  burdened  with  the  knowledge;  but  surely 
the  destiny  of  the  mind,  if  man  has  any  destiny, 
is  to  lay  this  burden  upon  itself. 


107 


CHAPTER  V 

FICTION 

THE  art  of  literature,  when  it  works  in 
prose,  does  not  change  its  method  from 
that  employed  in  poetry  nor  is  its  material 
different.  Prose  makes  a  less  rigorous  demand 
upon  the  reader's  attention  and  ability;  but  the 
action  of  the  mind  involved  is  the  same  as  in 
verse,  the  aims  of  study  are  the  same  and  the 
modes  of  appreciation  are  identical.  Art,  or 
the  universal  form  into  which  reason  casts 
experience  by  means  of  the  imagination,  con- 
trols great  works  of  prose  as  it  rules  great 
poems;  fiction  stands  at  the  head  of  prose  be- 
cause it  is  the  sphere  in  which  such  art  works 
most  freely  and  effectively;  and  in  proportion 
to  the  presence  of  such  art  is  fiction  great  and 
enduring.  Poetry  achieves  the  extreme  of  con- 
densation of  life  and  truth,  and  hence  the  appre- 
ciation of  it  requires  a  mind  naturally  rapid  and 
strong   in   apprehension;   a  high-strung   nature 

108 


Goldsmith 


Fiction 

finds  poetry  fitted  to  it;  but  the  reader  generally, 
less  intense  in  mental  application  and  concen- 
tration, prefers  prose  as  more  adapted  to  the 
normal  movement  of  his  mind.  This  choice 
continues  to  operate  even  in  prose,  and  the 
effort  of  the  mind  is  relaxed  in  proportion  as 
formative  art  is  less  present  in  the  work  and 
what  is  told  is  set  forth  in  its  natural  and  raw 
state  of  facts  as  they  occur.  Every  nation  has 
tales,  and  primitive  people  possess  a  store  of 
folk-lore,  but  fiction  as  a  special  mode  of  litera- 
ture develops  somewhat  late  in  civilization. 
It  has  a  literary  ancestry,  an  historic  evolution, 
which  can  readily  be  studied,  and  in  its  origins 
it  is  much  mixed  with  poetry.  In  our  own 
time  it  has  come  to  fill  so  large  a  portion  of  the 
literary  field  as  to  be  engrossing ;  it  is  in  a  pecul- 
iar sense  the  people's  literature  in  our  democra- 
cies, characterized  by  popular  education,  by 
home  leisure,  and  by  an  extraordinary  awaken- 
ing of  curiosity  in  large  masses.  It  is  a  power- 
ful means  for  the  spread  of  information  of  all 
kinds  and  for  the  propagation  of  ideas;  all 
knowledge  is  most  interesting  when  given  out 
in  the  form  of  imagination,  and  the  demand  for 
knowledge  was  never  so  great  as  now;  it  is  alto- 

109 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

gether  natural  that  the  novel,  the  most  flexible 
form  of  writing  for  imaginative  propaganda, 
should  be  the  preferred  modern  form  of  litera- 
ture. 

If  one  searches  for  the  occasion  of  fiction  and 
considers  its  wide  range  of  topic  and  interest, 
it  would  seem  that  no  more  satisfactory  answer 
can  be  given  than  mere  human  curiosity.  In 
response  to  this,  all  that  is  knowable  now  takes 
on  the  form  of  the  novel.  In  approaching  the 
field  choice  seems  almost  impossible,  so  varied 
are  the  interests  involved  and  all  with  many 
claims  to  regard.  The  young  mind,  however, 
has  a  native  instinct  of  its  own  grounded  in 
human  nature.  The  first  interest  of  men  is  in 
action,  in  the  event,  the  thing  which  is  done. 
This  is  the  interest  of  the  boy,  of  the  practical 
man,  of  the  man  whose  meditative  and  fuller 
spiritual  life  is  only  begun.  The  type  of  fiction 
of  this  sort  is  Robinson  Crusoe.  It  is  a  tale  of 
the  facts  of  life  in  a  wonderfully  interesting  form, 
and  the  literary  life  of  thousands  has  begun 
with  it.  The  more  exalted  type  is  the  novels 
of  Dumas,  where  in  a  romantic  form  the  life  of 
action  is  set  forth  with  the  interest  of  vividness, 
surprise    and     the    fascination    of     adventure. 

110 


Fiction 

Nothing  can  be  better  than  Dumas  to  arouse 
in  a  boy  the  sense  of  the  power  of  life,  the 
ambition  of  doing,  the  wonder  of  the  things 
that  can  be  done,  —  the  whole  charm  and 
marvel  of  the  world  of  the  deed.  Romance  is 
at  its  highest  in  this  field,  and  the  awakening 
influence  of  romance  on  the  mind  cannot  be 
overvalued;  it  opens  out  the  roads  of  all  the 
earth  and  the  seas,  and  gives  the  career  of  a 
gallant  will  in  meeting  the  unknown  and  finding 
the  hidden  treasure  of  a  man's  destiny.  Herod- 
otus was  in  history  the  very  type  of  such  spirit 
as  this,  and  it  made  his  history  one  of  the  great 
books  of  the  world.  Travelers  often  show  and 
breed  the  spirit  of  their  tales,  and  the  heroes 
are  made  of  it  from  the  voyage  of  the  Argo  to 
the  days  of  the  search  for  the  Pole.  In  imagi- 
native literature  Dumas  is  the  great  example, 
and  in  the  many  volumes  that  bear  his  name 
there  is  endless  store  of  the  most  inspiriting 
kind  of  such  action. 

The  first  advance  is  made  when  the  mind  is 
no  longer  content  with  the  action  in  itself,  but 
meditates  it,  and  finds  its  true  interest  to  lie  in 
what  the  act  reveals  of  the  character  of  the  man 
who    performs    it.     In    other    words,  character 

111 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

is  a  higher  interest  than  action,  and  supplants 
it  as  the  object  of  attention  in  a  maturing 
mind.  Character  is,  in  fact,  a  summary  of 
action  and  contains  both  the  effect  of  past  and 
the  promise  of  future  acts;  it  is,  as  it  were, 
a  brief  abstract  of  action,  its  potentiality.  Man 
here  comes  into  his  rights  as  the  leading  interest 
in  the  scene,  independent  of  the  events.  Charac- 
ter is  necessarily  ideal  in  literature;  it  is  set 
forth  by  its  ruling  passion,  and  in  the  beginning 
is  simple  rather  than  complex,  since  its  presen- 
tation is  limited  to  that  class  of  action  in  which 
its  distinction  resides;  one  reason  of  the  effect- 
iveness of  character  in  its  more  antique  or 
primitive  embodiments  is  this  simplicity  flow- 
ing from  the  extreme  ideality  or  abstractness 
of  the  type.  The  Greek  heroes  share  somewhat 
in  the  trait  of  being  by  virtue  of  which  the  gods 
are  ideal,  each  having  a  function  of  his  own, 
being  an  Ajax,  Patroclus,  Orestes,  Jason 
Heracles,  and  hence  marked  out  for  his  work. 
Character  is  thus  in  its  early  forms  action 
viewed  in  one  mode,  as  it  were,  and  compacted 
into  human  power,  unified,  individualized,  per- 
sonified. The  act  is  of  interest  in  itself  still, 
but   it   is   of    more   interest    as   being    the  act 

112 


Fiction 

of  Achilles  or  Ulysses  and  as  declaring  what 
manner  of  men  they  were.  Character  is  more 
profound  than  action,  and  hence  to  a  mature 
mind  is  more  engaging.  This  is  especially 
noticeable  in  those  persons  who  are  named 
characters  in  our  common  speech,  —  the  usually 
eccentric  personalities  who  are  peculiarly  speci- 
mens of  human  nature  out  of  the  ordinary,  and 
by  their  words  or  actions  give  a  fresh,  piquant, 
or  humorous  impression.  Without  regard  to 
such  exceptions,  however,  character  awakes  a 
profound  interest  because  in  its  types  are 
stored  ideals  of  what  men  are,  the  forms  cast 
by  the  moral  habits  and  the  aspirations  and 
experiences  of  the  race,  the  qualities  consonantly 
to  be  found  within  the  limits  of  one  personality, 
the  discords  possible  within  the  same  range; 
character  is  thus  a  compend  of  the  results  of 
life,  of  its  possibilities  in  the  individual,  of  its 
fusion  in  a  single  mold.  In  this  stage  charac- 
ter is  not  divorced  from  action,  but  both  are 
present;  the  character  is  seen  acting;  the  actions 
however  various  are  resumed  in  the  character. 
The  type  of  such  interest,  of  balance  between 
action  and  character  such  that  nevertheless 
the  character  rather  than  the  action  impresses 

113 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

the  mind  and  memory,  is  given  in  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  novels,  and  the  unique  place  that  Scott 
holds  in  English  fiction  is  due  to  this  firm  grasp 
of  life  in  the  form  of  character  which  is  still 
kept  close  to  action.  This  is  the  trait  by  which 
his  art  as  a  creator  is  so  supreme,  though  the 
power  with  which  he  seizes  the  reader  also 
owes  much  to  the  intrinsic  nature  of  the  charac- 
ter displayed,  to  its  being  national  in  type 
whether  Scotch  or  English  and  showing  that 
nationality  strongly  and  finely  in  essential  traits, 
to  its  being  doubly  presented  as  of  the  peasant 
and  the  noble  classes,  and  in  each  exemplified 
with  truth  to  the  life  of  the  one  and  the  ideal 
of  the  other,  and  also  to  its  being  inclusive  in 
its  eccentric  or  abnormal  instances  of  so  much 
that  is  plain  human  nature,  so  that  one  may  say 
indeed  that  no  types  are  so  universally  true  as 
those  which  seem  most  peculiar  in  his  pages, 
such  as  the  old  antiquary,  Noma  or  the  saints 
of  the  Covenant.  Scott  is  the  great  master  of 
character;  not  that  other  English  novelists  have 
not  equaled  him  in  such  portrayal,  but  none 
have  created  character  upon  such  a  scale,  in 
such  profusion,  with  such  social  comprehensive- 
ness, and  at  the  same  time  with  such  unfailing 

114 


Fiction 

human  reality.  In  his  works  one  always  finds 
the  substance  is  not  the  stream  of  events,  how- 
ever romantic  and  involved  in  mystery,  but 
man  acting  and  suffering;  not  the  plot,  but  the 
character.  There  is  a  perennial  attraction  in 
character  that  does  not  pertain  to  mere  story; 
and  this  mastery  of  character  is  the  trait  which 
makes  Scott  to  be  so  often  re-read  and  to  be  a 
favorite  in  later  as  well  as  in  youthful  years. 

Character  develops  a  new  kind  of  interest 
when  attention  is  fastened,  not  on  what  it  is, 
but  on  how  it  came  to  be  what  it  is.  The  inter- 
nal life  here  comes  to  the  fore;  the  evolution  of 
personality,  a  train  of  inward  phenomena,  is 
substituted  for  a  course  of  external  events  as 
the  subject  of  interest,  however  much  events 
may  be  mixed  with  the  story.  This  study  of 
motivation  and  internal  reaction  marks  the  final 
stage  of  the  development  of  the  novel  in  its 
presentation  of  life  and  completes  the  circuit  of 
its  sphere.  Psychology,  analysis,  introspection, 
characterize  it,  and  it  requires  in  the  reader  an 
intellectual  interest  perhaps  stronger  than  the 
imaginative  interest.  The  history  of  a  soul, 
rather  as  a  phase  of  inward  experience  than  of 
action,  is   the   focus  of    attention.     The   intro- 

115 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

spective  novel  in  the  emotional  sphere,  the 
novel  of  sentiment,  is  an  early  form  of  such 
analysis  and  is  illustrated  in  Richardson,  but 
in  its  higher  and  more  complex  examples  the 
psychological  novel  full-grown  naturally  allies 
itself  to  some  theory  of  morals,  some  abstract 
element  in  religion  or  ethics,  and  sets  forth  life 
as  an  education  of  the  character  in  such  a  view. 
The  type,  perhaps,  in  which  the  various  con- 
stituents are  the  most  clear  and  at  the  same  time 
noble,  is  George  Eliot's  R&mola,  in  which  great 
and  conflicting  ideals  of  life  are  presented 
through  the  medium  of  the  leading  characters 
by  a  psychological  and  largely  introspective 
treatment.  Her  interest  in  life  was  that  of  a 
philosophical  moralist,  and  her  fiction  showed 
increasingly  the  analytical  habit.  The  simpler 
blends  of  character  and  action  in  her  earlier 
tales  give  place  in  her  fully  ripened  work  to  a 
wide  and  complex  exposition  of  the  nature  of 
her  persons  in  which  the  element  of  thought 
finally  overweights  the  narrative.  Just  as  dra- 
matic poetry  issues  in  a  philosophical  interest, 
so  the  novel,  as  it  develops  power  and  grasps 
life  more  profoundly  and  naturally,  appeals 
with  greater  directness   to   the   intellect   in   its 

116 


Fiction 

effort  to  understand  human  life.  It  may  de- 
velop this  intellectual  quality  in  either  of  the 
three  forms  of  pure  action,  of  synthetic  or  of 
analytic  character,  but  the  quality  is  most 
pronounced,  pervasive  and  engrossing  in  the 
last.  In  such  writers  as  Henry  James  and 
George  Meredith  it  reaches  a  climax.  Litera- 
ture, moreover,  must  always  be  viewed  his- 
torically as  obeying  the  general  law  of  evolution 
in  society;  its  movement  is  constantly  toward 
a  representation  of  the  inward  nature  of  life, 
to  bring  out  man's  self -consciousness,  to  reveal 
personality.  The  problems  of  personality  are 
those  which  finally  engage  the  mature  mind  in  a 
highly  developed  literature,  and  the  psychologi- 
cal novel  is  the  center  where  this  study  is  most 
active.  This  line  of  development  is  not  peculiar 
to  fiction,  but  belongs  to  literature  in  general, 
which  tends  more  and  more  to  become  a  con- 
fessional of  the  soul's  experience,  a  dissection 
of  life,  a  pursuit  of  the  motives  and  reactions 
of  the  inner  world,  of  the  moods  and  methods  of 
thought  and  passion  in  their  intimate  cells, 
of  all  the  secrets,  in  one  word,  of  personality. 

The  interest  of  the  novel  being  thus  distributed 
in  these  three  general  modes  of  action,  charac- 

117 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

ter  in  action,  and  personality  for  its  own  sake, 
the  story  itself  may  be  unfolded  in  any  one  of 
many  ways  or  by  a  blend  of  several,  the  chief 
elements  being  plot,  character,  situation,  dia- 
logue, sentiment,  and  the  like,  variously  com- 
pounded according  to  the  talent  and  purpose 
of  the  writer.  A  greater  emphasis  on  any  one 
of  these  elements  gives  a  special  quality  to  the 
work  and  makes  a  particular  appeal  to  some 
one  class  of  readers  whose  taste  is  for  that 
element.  Whatever  methods  be  employed,  the 
enduring  worth  of  the  novel  in  its  English  ex- 
amples depends  much  on  the  success  of  the 
writer  in  giving  the  scene  of  life  as  a  whole,  in 
securing  the  illusion  of  a  full  world,  or  one  that 
at  least  is  complete  for  the  characters  inhabit- 
ing it.  The  perfection  of  this  environing  of 
the  characters  with  a  world  is  seen  in  Shake- 
speare's plays ;  and  in  proportion  as  the  novelists 
achieve  this  effect,  and  at  the  same  time  obtain 
human  reality,  they  show  the  highest  imagina- 
tive power,  true  creative  faculty.  There  is  no 
surer  sign  of  greatness  in  a  novel  than  this 
large  grasp  of  general  life,  the  crowded  stage, 
the  throng  of  affairs,  the  sense  of  a  world  of 
men.     It  was  thus  that  Dickens  began  to  dis- 

118 


Fiction 

play  his  remarkable  faculty  in  Pickwick  Papers, 
rendering  the  various  face  of  English  life  and 
manners  in  a  series  of  loosely  connected  sketches. 
Character  and  manners,  seconded  by  genial 
good  nature  and  humorousness,  make  the  per- 
ennial attraction  of  that  marvelous  piece  of 
entertainment,  which  was  the  precursor  of  great 
novels  conceived  on  more  rigorous  lines  of  con- 
struction and  with  more  breadth  and  poignancy 
of  interest,  but  all  alike  in  this  power  to  render 
life  as  a  miscellaneous  scene  of  human  activity. 
Scott  similarly  in  his  greatest  tales  never  fails 
to  give  largeness  to  his  world  and  to  fill  it  with 
currents  of  social  life,  with  events  of  high 
interest  and  with  a  multitude  of  persons. 
Thackeray  in  a  narrower  sphere  of  society 
follows  the  same  method  in  Vanity  Fair,  and 
Fielding  in  Tom  Jones.  In  all  these  authors 
the  hero  counts  for  little;  the  particular  tale  of 
individuals  involved,  the  plot,  the  mere  personal 
story,  however  well  constructed  and  interesting 
that  part  of  the  work  may  be,  is  yet  repre- 
sented as  a  portion  of  the  world  only,  a  world 
that  embraces  them  in  its  larger  being.  In 
David  Copperfield  the  tale  of  Emily  and  that 
of  Agnes   divide   the   interest,   but   they   seem 

119 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

episodes;  it  is  the  picture  of  life  as  a  whole  that 
dwells  in  the  memory.  In  this  larger  world  it 
may  be  character  and  manners  or  the  interplay 
of  events,  it  may  be  superficial  movement,  as 
in  the  picaresque  novel  generally,  or  it  may  be 
profound  social  movement,  as  in  the  greater 
historical  novels,  that  holds  the  front  place; 
but  whatever  the  method,  the  substance  is  of 
the  world  of  men. 

The  highest  degree  of  universality  and  in- 
clusiveness  is  reached  in  Cervantes 's  Don 
Quixote,  which  while  remaining  a  tale  of 
individuals  sums  up  the  national  scene,  the 
elements  of  Spain,  its  genius,  its  history,  and 
also  gives  through  this  the  sense  of  human  life 
in  the  broad,  the  truth  of  human  nature  as  it 
is  everywhere.  Don  Quixote  is  the  greatest  of 
all  novels  because  singly  it  contains  so  large  a 
world.  In  lesser  novels  of  similar  type  the 
world  set  forth  does  not  lose  unity,  it  does  not 
seem  partial,  but  yet  it  comprehends  only  some 
portion  of  the  scene,  as  in  the  provincial  novel 
generally,  or  some  strip  of  time,  as  in  the  his- 
torical novel.  The  breadth  of  the  theme  makes 
a  large  part  of  the  intrinsic  value  of  such  novels, 
which   offer    an   embodiment,   for  example,   of 

120 


Fiction 

present  life,  or  a  panorama  of  an  epoch,  or  a 
rehabilitation  of  an  antique  age.  Irish  tales 
are  good  in  proportion  as  they  give  the  Irish 
spirit  and  environment.  Reade's  The  Cloister 
and  the  Hearth  is  a  great  historical  novel  be- 
cause of  its  breadth  of  treatment,  and  Kingsley's 
Hypatia  excels  because  of  its  comprehensive- 
ness, its  being  a  summary  of  one  moment  of 
ancient  life  intensely  imagined.  In  all  these 
novels  there  is  a  theme,  which  in  a  certain  sense 
exceeds  and  contains  the  personal  theme,  a 
theme  of  time,  —  of  Alexandria,  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  of  Ireland.  It  is  not  at  all  essential  that 
this  outer  theme  should  be  rendered  with  his- 
torical accuracy  or  be  true  in  its  details  in  the 
sense  of  fact.  What  is  necessary  is  that  an 
illusion  of  truth  should  be  arrived  at  by  fidelity 
to  the  general  traits  of  the  city,  the  age,  or  the 
land,  so  that  the  world  of  the  story  shall  be 
representative  of  what  was.  One  reason  of  the 
facility  with  which  the  historical  novel  is  written 
and  received  is  because  this  outer  theme,  Rome 
or  Italy  or  France,  is  in  itself  great,  and  an 
undying  interest  of  powerful  fascination  belongs 
to  it  independent  of  the  particular  tale  that 
may  be  narrated  as  a  personal  history  within 

121 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

its  limits.  Such  a  theme  naturally  induces  a 
series,  the  Jacobite  novels  of  Scott,  the  Indian 
and  sea-tales  of  Cooper;  each  particular  story 
is  but  one  product  of  it,  and  no  author  exhausts 
it  though  he  may  exhaust  his  own  power  of 
dealing  with  it.  The  theme,  the  world  of  men 
involved,  diminishes  in  importance  in  propor- 
tion as  the  particular  tale  makes  head  and 
absorbs  attention;  but,  in  general,  great  novelists 
give  the  scene  of  the  world,  the  picture  of  life, 
whether  in  a  contemporary  or  historical  range, 
the  first  place  in  their  representation.  This 
is  true  without  reference  to  the  scale  of  that 
world;  it  is,  for  example,  the  method  of  Gold- 
smith in  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield.  The  novel  is 
indeed  the  form  of  literary  art  best  adapted  to 
representing  man  as  a  social  being  and  to  setting 
forth  in  imagination  social  phenomena;  this  is 
one  reason,  also,  why  its  evolution  is  so  late  in 
the  history  of  literature. 

The  art  of  literature  in  passing  into  the  novel 
does  not  lose  its  function  of  presenting  general 
truth.  That  is  still  its  main  aim.  The  neces- 
sity of  doing  so,  in  fact,  underlies  all  that  has 
been  said  of  the  part  taken  in  the  novel  by  the 
scene  of  life,  the  illusion  that  it  must  give  of  a 

122 


Fiction 

world,  whether  in  the  sphere  of  manners  or 
history,  not  actual  but  containing  the  general 
reality  of  human  events  in  a  particular  time  or 
country  and  of  human  nature  in  its  essential 
traits.  There  is  an  epical  element,  as  is  plain, 
in  the  description  which  fiction  of  the  sort  that 
has  been  treated  gives  of  life.  When  the 
social  theme  is  less  prominently  brought  for- 
ward and  the  particular  story  of  a  few  indi- 
viduals enlists  attention  for  its  own  sake,  then 
the  novel  avails  itself  of  the  same  resources 
used  in  dramatic  art.  It  represents  the  general 
law  of  life  and  the  constitution  of  human  nature 
by  means  of  examples,  and  the  worth  of  the 
novel  depends,  just  as  in  a  play,  on  the  sim- 
plicity, clearness  and  profundity  with  which 
it  accomplishes  the  task.  There  is  no  material 
difference  between  the  novel  and  the  drama 
so  far  as  the  handling  of  plot,  situation  and 
dialogue  are  concerned,  except  that  in  a  novel 
the  writer  has  a  free  hand  and  can  use  more 
means  of  displaying  his  characters  and  their 
career.  In  George  Eliot's  Adam  Bede,  for 
example,  there  is,  it  is  true,  a  background  of 
country  and  clerical  life  and  of  religious  agita- 
tion; but  the  story  is  mainly  conducted  in  the 

123 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

fortunes  of  a  few  individuals  placed  in  the 
foreground.  It  is  a  tragic  history  that  is  re- 
lated. Its  profound  interest  is  its  life  interest, 
the  illustration  it  gives  of  human  events,  the 
light  it  throws  on  principles  of  conduct,  belief, 
the  operation  of  wrong,  facts  of  passion,  theories 
of  sin  and  salvation  and  the  like.  The  story 
exists  and  was  written  for  the  sake  of  its  teach- 
ing power;  and  this  is  more  manifest  than  in 
the  drama  because  in  the  medium  of  prose  the 
teaching  can  be  more  plainly  brought  out  and 
emphasized.  Such  novels  are  dramatic  in  their 
interest;  they  cover  the  same  tracts  of  life  as 
the  drama,  whether  in  comedy  or  tragedy,  and 
the  mode  of  mental  approach  to  them  is  the 
same,  except  that  the  novelist  makes  under- 
standing of  his  theme  more  easy  for  the  reader 
by  the  greater  fulness  of  the  presentation  and 
by  the  comment  that,  whether  explicit  or  im- 
plicit, is  always  to  be  found  in  the  text.  It  may 
be  said,  indeed,  that  there  is  no  form  of  poetic 
truth  that  the  novel  in  one  way  or  another  may 
not  present,  usually  but  not  always  with  less 
intensity;  the  analysis  of  the  novel  discloses  the 
same  substance  as  poetry,  the  same  funda- 
mental human  life  which  is  the  matter  of  all 

124 


Fiction 

literature.  Symbolical  truth  is  that  which  is, 
perhaps,  thought  of  as  most  characteristic  of 
poetry;  but  it  exists  in  the  novel  quite  as  plainly 
and  in  its  most  apparent  forms.  Bunyan's 
Pilgrim's  Progress  is  a  work  of  fiction  which 
has  all  its  meaning  in  the  spiritual  truth  which 
is  there  set  forth  in  allegory,  and  it  is  one  of  the 
most  widely  distributed  of  English  books.  The 
type  of  the  method,  is,  however,  rather  to  be 
found  in  Hawthorne.  In  his  short  romantic 
tales  it  is  commonly  used,  as,  for  example,  in 
Rappaccini's  Daughter  and  The  Artist  of  the 
Beautiful,  where  the  reader  who  does  not  in- 
terpret the  symbols  misses  the  meaning.  The 
Scarlet  Letter  is  a  still  more  striking  example 
of  the  symbolic  representation  of  life;  the  back- 
ground of  the  Puritan  world  is  but  slightly 
indicated  by  the  romancer,  but  he  blazes  forth 
its  essence  by  a  series  of  picturesque  scenes 
that  are  like  a  sign  language  of  the  imagination. 
The  same  author's  Marble  Faun  pursues  the 
same  method;  the  world  involved  is  but  lamely 
made  out,  and  so  inadequately  that  even  Dona- 
tello  seems  an  alien  in  it,  like  the  rest,  but  none 
the  less  a  theory  of  sin  is  symbolized  by  means 
of  it  with  a  refinement  and  intimacy  such  that 

125 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

one  seems  rather  to  be  looking  at  pictures  and 
statues  than  listening  to  a  tale  of  events.  To 
render  life  by  symbols  of  landscape  and  idyllic 
situations  belongs  peculiarly  to  poetry,  but  in 
the  Greek  novel  it  is  found  as  charmingly  set 
forth  as  in  verse,  and  the  pastoral  enters  as  an 
element  into  much  prose  fiction  in  various  forms. 
In  Watts-Dunton's  Aylwin  characteristically 
poetic  modes  are  prevailingly  employed  to 
render  gypsy  nature.  So  near  is  romance  to 
poetry  that  it  often  makes  the  distinct  poetic 
appeal,  as,  to  take  a  great  instance,  in  Black- 
more's  Lorna  Doone.  The  lyric,  dramatic  and 
epic  elements,  being  fundamental  in  literature, 
are  all  to  be  found  in  prose  fiction,  and  the 
art  employed  is  the  same  creative  imagination 
constructing  an  illusory  world  in  order  to  set 
forth  the  general  truth  of  human  life. 

Fiction,  therefore,  in  its  great  examples  ap- 
proaches poetry  because  it  uses  the  same  ma- 
terial to  the  same  ends  and  proceeds  by  the 
same  method  of  art,  universalizing  life  and 
formulating  it;  but  it  differs  from  poetry  because 
it  is  less  delicate  in  the  selection  of  its  material, 
less  exacting  of  a  high  degree  of  art  in  dealing 
with   it,   and   directed   to   utilities   that   poetry 

126 


Fiction 

ignores.  The  art  of  fiction  is  two-faced;  it  is 
both  a  fine  and  a  useful  art;  and  if  on  the  one 
hand  in  works  of  great  genius  it  comes  nigh  to 
the  supreme  masters  of  the  drama,  on  the  other 
extreme  it  neighbors  that  universal  human 
service  of  which  the  modern  name  is  journalism, 
—  the  literature  of  information,  propagand- 
ism,  world-wide  curiosity,  discussion,  specu- 
lation, of  which  it  may  be  said  more  truly  than 
of  any  other  form  of  writing  that  nothing  human 
is  alien  to  it.  Journalism  is  the  most  catholic 
form  of  the  written  word.  The  novel  is  the  next 
most  embracing,  and  its  flexibility  as  a  social 
instrument  under  present  conditions  has  given 
it  the  commanding  practical  place  which  it 
holds  among  readers.  It  is  by  the  novel  that 
the  life-knowledge  of  modern  peoples  is  most 
fully  realized  to  themselves,  in  every  degree  of  the 
scale  of  society,  in  popular  apprehension.  This 
great  change  was  largely  effected  by  the  advent 
of  democracy.  In  the  old  literature  the  national 
tradition  and  morality  were  concentrated  in  the 
history,  real  or  imaginary,  of  the  aristocratic 
class  with  but  slight  popular  elements,  and  this 
was  handed  down  in  poetry  and  chronicle  and 
tale;  but  with  the  coming  of  modern  democracy 

127 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

the  popular  life  itself  came  into  the  field  of 
interest,  and  literature  giving  more  and  more 
attention  to  the  citizen  life  ended  by  assigning  to 
the  common  lot  of  men  the  place  which  has 
formerly  been  held  by  the  aristocracy.  The 
democratizing  of  literature  which  began  with 
Richardson  and  Fielding,  in  the  novel,  and  with 
Burns  and  Wordsworth,  in  poetry,  resulted  in 
the  last  century  in  England  in  a  representation 
of  life  in  all  its  classes,  provinces,  and  interests, 
such  as  no  civilization  had  ever  before  placed 
on  record  about  itself.  The  reading  class  was 
democratic,  and  men  like  to  read  about  them- 
selves, to  see  their  own  lives  reflected,  their 
opinions  expressed,  and  their  ideals  defined;  they 
also  desire  information  about  the  way  other 
men  live  whose  modes  of  behavior  and  thought, 
though  they  may  be  members  of  the  same 
society,  are  not  well  or  intimately  known;  a 
public  thus  came  into  existence  for  which  the 
minute  and  detailed  portrayal  of  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  Englishmen,  and  of  every  nook 
of  English  ground,  was  interesting.  The  field 
of  human  life  covered  by  the  novel  became 
immense  in  variety  and  comprehensiveness. 
There  were  certain  preferred  tastes  inherent  in 

128 


Fiction 

English  society,  and  the  English  novel  showed 
these  preferences ;  the  writers,  too,  could  deal 
individually  only  with  such  phases  of  life  as 
they  knew;  the  novel  remained  socially  aris- 
tocratic and  middle-class,  with  an  episodic 
attention  to  the  lower  state  of  society,  but  it 
faithfully  reflected  the  consciousness  of  the 
English  people,  and  the  growth  of  the  democ- 
racy is  shown  in  the  ever  increasing  emergence 
of  the  literature  of  the  least  favored,  the  stricken 
and  abandoned  class.  Dickens  was  the  leader 
and  marks  the  powerful  entrance  of  philan- 
thropy into  the  novel,  and  the  portraiture  of 
the  lower  class  by  him  and  others  perhaps  made 
up  in  genius  what  it  lacked  in  quantity.  The 
English,  however,  are  not  a  frank  race,  and 
various  as  their  picture  of  life  is  in  the  novel, 
it  is  still  discreet  and  controlled.  France,  in 
the  representation  of  life  given  by  her  novelists, 
exceeded  the  English  in  the  comprehensive  ful- 
ness of  the  portrayal;  both  Balzac  and  Zola 
attempted  a  survey  of  life  more  systematic  and 
complete  than  any  single  English  author  con- 
ceived, and  the  French  novel  surpasses  the 
English  as  an  ample  expression  of  human 
nature    in    all    social    degrees    and    conditions. 

129 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

There  was  an  advantage  in  the  concentration 
of  the  national  tradition  and  morality  in  the 
old  literature  which  was  especially  favorable 
to  poetry;  on  the  other  hand  the  dispersion  of 
interest  by  the  democracy  through  all  classes 
of  society  and  in  all  parts  of  the  national  body 
creates  a  stronger  social  bond,  develops  hu- 
manitarianism  and  is  vastly  more  informing  to 
the  mind.  The  exposure  of  human  conditions 
accomplished  by  the  novel  is  a  powerful  ele- 
ment in  social  progress. 

The  expansion  of  the  historical  consciousness 
of  modern  society  was  an  element  hardly  less 
important  than  the  democratization  of  fiction  as 
an  influence  on  the  development  of  the  novel. 
What  is  loosely  termed  the  Gothic  revival  with 
its  resuscitation  of  the  mediaeval  age  and  its 
discovery  of  the  primitive  poetry  of  the  North, 
and  the  Hellenic  revival  with  its  reinvigoration 
of  Latin  studies  and  its  discovery  of  archaeology 
in  the  South,  opened  between  them  the  whole 
past  of  Europe  through  its  entire  extent,  while 
the  developing  contact  of  England  with  the  East 
brought  with  it  the  fiction  of  the  Orient  as  well 
as  its  poetry.  History  in  many  forms  was 
pursued   in   order  to  unveil   the  past   and   the 

130 


Fiction 

distant,  and  it  laid  open  new  material  for  the 
novelist;  as  soon  as  Scott  had  so  brilliantly 
shown  that  history  was  most  fascinating  in  the 
form  of  imaginative  romance,  the  novel  entered 
upon  its  career  of  recreating  the  past  with 
extraordinary  vigor,  and  it  has  found  in  this 
field  a  scope  and  diversity  that  make  the  his- 
torical novel  perhaps  the  preferred  form  of  the 
art.  The  history  of  the  world  has  been  re- 
written in  the  last  century  as  fiction;  even 
what  is  most  recondite  and  obscure,  and  belongs 
to  the  world  of  the  learned,  has  been  clothed 
with  color  and  vitality  as  if  contemporary,  in 
the  tales  of  Roman  Africa,  Egypt  and  Byzan- 
tium in  which  the  French  especially  excel. 
In  the  more  barbarous  parts  of  history,  such  as 
the  East  of  Europe,  native  writers  have  recon- 
structed the  past  and  made  it  available  for 
other  nations.  The  reader  of  the  historical 
novel,  in  fact,  without  effort  commands  an 
intelligent  knowledge  of  the  history  of  the 
European  world  and  its  antecedent  classical 
sources  such  as  would  not  have  been  possible 
even  to  a  scholar  in  the  last  age. 

The  novel  thus  contains  a  vast  fund  of  in- 
formation  which   it   diffuses.    It   is   a   teaching 

131 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

power  of  immense  efficiency,  and  still  more 
useful  for  the  spread  of  ideas  than  for  the 
diffusion  of  facts.  It  has  developed  a  power 
of  propagandism  which  has  previously  been 
found  mainly  in  eloquent  discourse.  The  type 
of  such  use  of  the  novel  is  Mrs.  Stowe's  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin.  In  a  lower  form  it  is  constantly 
employed  as  an  instrument  of  discussion.  A 
good  example  is  Bronte's  Jane  Eyre,  in  which 
a  moral  situation  is  presented  in  conflict  with 
human  law.  Every  cause  finds  in  the  novel  a 
mode  of  presenting  the  facts,  and  advocating 
the  ideas,  which  it  is  especially  concerned  to 
make  known.  One  of  the  most  precious  of 
human  rights,  the  right  to  be  heard,  is  prac- 
tically secured  by  the  wide-spread  and  habitual 
employment  of  fiction  as  a  public  forum.  All 
knowledge  gains  by  being  put  into  the  form  of 
a  tale;  it  travels  faster,  it  enters  the  mind  more 
vividly,  it  enlists  the  emotions  more  powerfully. 
The  power  of  propaganda  is  one  of  the  chief 
traits  of  the  novel  as  a  social  force.  The  novel, 
moreover,  vivifies  intellectual  interest  of  all 
kinds.  It  follows,  for  example,  in  the  wake  of 
scientific  discovery,  of  exploration,  of  mere 
speculation,  and  forthwith  builds  a  tale  on  the 

132 


Fiction 

new  ground.  The  most  recent  knowledge  of  for- 
eign lands,  wars,  industrial  adventure,  commer- 
cial progress,  social  experiment,  is  immediately 
popularized  in  this  form.  Every  community, 
every  employment  of  men,  every  idea  is  gathered 
in  this  drag-net  of  the  time ;  the  novel  has  become 
the  epitome  of  the  modern  world. 

In  the  case  of  a  form  of  literature  so  variously 
characterized,  so  miscellaneously  reproductive 
of  experience  and  in  its  mass  hardly  to  be 
divided  from  life  itself,  the  reader  finds  himself 
bewildered  and  choice  is  difficult.  The  literary 
principle  of  worth  is  plain,  but  other  values 
enter  in,  and  disturb  and  deflect  the  decision  of 
the  mind.  The  utilities  of  reading  are  so 
many,  and  in  some  cases  so  attractive,  that  the 
confinement  of  choice  by  the  principle  of  art 
is  often  felt  to  be  a  hardship  and  to  result  in 
substantial  loss.  To  state  the  principle  broadly, 
fiction  as  an  art  has  worth  in  proportion  to  the 
fulness  of  its  representation,  to  the  arc  of  life 
it  includes  -within  a  single  work,  where  the 
treatment  is  extensive  in  method,  or  to  the 
intensity  of  its  representation,  to  the  power  of 
life  it  includes,  when  the  treatment  is  intensive. 
The   more   of  life,   in   extension   or   intension, 

133 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

that  any  book  has,  the  greater  is  the  book.  This 
is  the  general  principle,  true  of  all  literature, 
because  the  literary  art  has  for  its  end  to  con- 
centrate life  and  truth  by  the  use  of  the  imagina- 
tion in  examples  that  are  finally  interpreted  by 
the  mind,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  as 
universal  symbols.  Those  novels  are  highest 
in  literary  interest  which  accomplish  this  pur- 
pose with  most  fulness.  Don  Quixote  has 
already  been  cited  as  the  type  of  such  greatness 
and  rank;  and,  in  general,  the  sign  of  fulness 
of  meaning  in  the  extensive  sense  is,  as  has  been 
said,  the  presence  in  the  novel  of  the  great 
scene  of  life.  Ideal  literature,  greatly  inclusive 
of  life  and  character,  holds  the  first  place  in 
fiction  as  in  poetry. 

The  English  novel  of  itself  yields  some 
guidance.  It  is,  perhaps  the  purest  growth  of 
English  literary  genius,  that  in  which  native 
power  is  most  unmixed  with  foreign  elements. 
English  poetic  genius  is  largely  indebted  to 
foreign  grafts,  to  the  continental  mediums  of 
the  old  tradition  and  to  that  tradition  in  its 
antique  sources.  English  poetry  cannot  be  very 
intelligently  understood  except  by  a  classically 
educated  mind,  and  its  creators  directly  or  in- 

134 


Fiction 

directly  were  bred  of  the  South  of  Europe  and 
heirs  of  the  Mediterranean.  With  English  fic- 
tion the  case  is  different.  Character  has  always 
held  a  favored  place  in  the  minds  of  the  English ; 
whether  in  the  form  of  practical  action  or  of 
moral  precept  a  prime  value  has  been  placed 
upon  it;  the  English  mind  is  prepossessed  with 
the  moral  meaning  of  life,  with  its  practical 
issues,  with  its  ethical  reality.  Reality,  too,  in 
its  obvious  forms  of  fact,  event,  fixed  trait,  is  a 
large  ingredient  in  the  interest  the  English  take 
in  life;  they  are  attached  to  the  soil  and  to  the 
characters  that  grow  out  of  it,  to  human  nature 
as  modified  and  modeled  by  it,  to  the  strength 
of  life  that  thrives  there.  English  life,  in  the 
home-bred,  high-flavored,  obvious  form  was  the 
subject  of  the  English  novel  from  the  first 
moment  of  its  greatness,  and  a  predominant 
interest  in  character  controlled  it.  The  tradi- 
tion of  Fielding  was  never  lost;  the  handling 
of  genuine  human  events  for  the  display  of 
character,  and  both  in  close  neighborhood  with 
the  soil,  is  characteristic  of  the  English  novel 
in  the  great  line  of  its  development.  It  followed 
from  this  that  the  novel  entered  easily  into 
national     literature.     What     makes     literature 

135 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

national  is  its  embodiment  of  the  national 
tradition  and  the  national  morality;  it  is  plain 
at  a  glance  that  Fielding  and  Scott  accom- 
plished this  with  great  power,  and  Dickens  and 
Thackeray  likewise  in  their  turn;  in  these  four 
writers  their  countrymen  are  presented  with 
extraordinary  fidelity  in  the  scene  of  their  life 
and  with  reality.  It  is  the  life  of  England  and 
of  Englishmen,  of  Scotland  and  of  Scotchmen, 
that  is  read  in  these  books;  and  the  minor 
novelists,  Goldsmith,  Smollett,  Sterne,  Austen, 
Bronte,  supplement  the  great  masters  with  a 
picture  of  life  similarly  English-bred.  The 
work  of  George  Eliot  and  Kingsley  is  most 
interesting,  and  is  either  great  or  approaches 
greatness,  in  proportion  as  it  adds  to  the  stream 
of  national  tradition,  in  the  scene  of  English  life, 
and  of  national  morality,  in  the  display  of  man- 
ners and  ideals  of  plain  English  mold.  The 
reader  who  is  seeking  the  substance  of  life  in 
the  novel  should  keep  close  to  this  great  tra- 
dition of  English  life  in  the  books  where  it  is 
most  vividly  put  forth  and  is  felt  to  be  most 
national.  A  national  literature  is  always  great, 
because  it  contains  the  ideal  form  of  the  nation 
reminiscently    beheld.     Those    English    novels 

136 


Fiction 

have  the  most  worth  in  which  life  and  character 
are  most  nationally  portrayed  with  breadth, 
reality,  and  affection ;  they  are  found  in  the  line 
of  the  standard  tradition. 

What  makes  literature  standard  is  that  it 
permanently  embodies  the  national  conscious- 
ness in  its  historic  forms  as  each  ceases  to  be 
contemporary  and  passes  into  memory.  Stand- 
ard literature  is  consequently  always  partially 
out-of-date  and  falls  to  the  scholar  or  to  the 
reader  who  desires  to  realize  the  past.  It  often 
happens,  however,  that  standard  literature  long 
retains  a  living  relation  to  successive  genera- 
tions by  virtue  of  its  containing  some  element 
that  does  not  grow  out  of  date,  and  literature 
is  great  in  proportion  as  it  contains  this  prin- 
ciple of  life.  Achilles  and  Ulysses,  for  example, 
continued  through  ages  to  be  real  and  nigh  to 
the  Greek  consciousness  of  life.  The  novel, 
inasmuch  as  it  is  more  mixed  with  contemporary 
and  transitory  elements  than  poetry,  passes 
more  quickly  into  the  past;  but  the  standard 
English  novel  still  retains  many  characters  and 
much  action  that  are  as  contemporary  to  our 
minds  as  when  the  story  was  originally  written. 
A  man,  nevertheless,  must  live  and  die  with  his 

137 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

own  generation,  and  the  literature  that  is  really 
out  of  date  need  not  greatly  concern  him,  ex- 
cept so  far  as  he  desires  to  be  informed  about 
the  past  of  his  people  and  their  writers. 

A  second  guiding  principle  in  the  field  of  the 
novel  may  be  found  in  the  power  it  has  to  ex- 
pand the  mind  and  interests  of  the  reader.  The 
office  of  the  novel  in  expanding  knowledge,  in 
making  the  world  known  to  itself  in  all  parts, 
has  been  touched  on;  in  the  individual  case  the 
reader  may  be  guided  in  his  choice  in  propor- 
tion as  he  finds  the  material  and  power  of  the 
writer  working  this  effect  in  himself.  This 
expansion  of  the  mind  is  most  valuable  when  it 
takes  place  in  the  world  of  humanity  at  large 
so  that  the  reader  becomes  better  informed 
with  regard  to  the  common  lot  of  mankind  and 
is  thereby  made  more  humane,  more  fully  man, 
more  sympathetically  at  one  with  his  fellows. 
Perhaps  the  greatest  humanitarian  novel  is 
Victor  Hugo's  Les  Miserables,  both  by  the  scope 
of  its  scene  and  action  and  by  the  ideas  that 
shape  and  create  the  story.  In  a  broader  way 
the  Russian  novel,  taken  in  its  whole  career, 
gives  a  revelation  of  the  lot  of  mankind  which 
is  to  the  reader  like  the  discovery  of  a  new  land, 

138 


Fiction 

and  in  connection  with  it  stand  humanitarian 
ideas  closely  joined;  the  expansion  both  of 
knowledge  and  of  sympathy  is  most  serviceable 
and  the  literary  type  of  the  Russian  novel  is 
itself  high  both  for  plot,  character  and  passion. 
The  power  of  expansion,  however,  does  not 
reside  only  in  foreign  novels  or  depend  on  a  new 
and  distant  scene  or  a  strange  mode  of  life. 
Any  great  experience  expands  the  mind;  and, 
in  a  secondary  way,  to  read  of  a  great  experience 
has  the  same  effect.  The  experience  of  a  great 
love  is  the  most  transforming  power  in  life,  and 
hence  no  type  of  story  is  so  constant,  so  sure 
of  interest,  or  so  valuable.  This  is  the  fascina- 
tion of  Lorna  Doom,  and  of  many  another  tale. 
The  experience  of  a  great  repentance  makes  the 
attraction  of  The  Scarlet  Letter.  The  great 
novels  of  tragedy  and  passion  have  their  power 
over  the  reader  in  the  sense  of  this  experience, 
which  he  lives  through  in  imagination  and  takes 
partially  at  least  to  himself.  If  the  mind 
expands  either  in  information  and  sympathy, 
leading  to  a  fuller  comprehension  of  the  com- 
mon lot,  or  in  realizing  the  great  experiences  of 
life,  the  reader  may  well  be  assured  that  he  is 
in  a  right  path. 

139 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

A  third  working  principle,  and  one  of  the 
widest  application,  is  recreation.  Fiction  is 
the  home  of  mental  leisure;  and  nowhere  is  the 
fundamental  aim  of  literature,  the  will  to  please, 
pursued  so  purely  and  with  such  unrestricted 
freedom.  Men  take  their  recreation  variously, 
and  no  rule  can  be  laid  down.  Some  enjoy 
reading  about  themselves  and  their  neighbors 
and  seeing  life  as  they  know  it,  in  a  book.  The 
more  common  way  is  to  desire  a  change  of  scene, 
a  new  environment  and  a  tale  that  shall  take 
us  out  of  ourselves.  The  presence  of  excite- 
ment in  the  story  is  the  surest  means  of  caus- 
ing absorption  of  interest  and  securing  that 
release  from  the  every-day  world  which  is  sought, 
a  break  in  the  monotony  of  life  and  affairs,  or 
rest  from  its  overtaxing  business;  and  in  the 
present  time  often  the  wish  is  to  escape  from 
the  world  of  thought.  The  great  hold  of  the 
novel  of  adventure  on  the  public  is  due  to  such 
desires;  it  is  action  that  is  wanted,  or  character 
which  puts  all  of  itself  into  deeds  and  is  scarcely 
known  except  as  it  acts.  This  is  the  simplest 
form  of  fiction  and  makes  the  least  demand 
upon  the  reader,  while  it  allows  him  to  lead  in 
fancy  and  sympathy  a  life  which  is  stirring  and 

140 


Fiction 

at  the  same  time  irresponsible.  The  novel  of 
adventure  holds  the  first  place  in  the  literature 
of  recreation  and  is  to  be  found  wherever  tales 
are  told.  It  has  the  advantage  of  always  hav- 
ing a  story  to  tell;  it  blends  with  the  great 
events  and  famous  personages  of  history  and 
also  with  the  unknown  on  sea  and  land,  with 
lonely  peril,  with  villainy  of  every  kind;  it  taxes 
human  energy  and  resource  to  the  utmost,  and 
appeals  to  that  love  of  the  heroic  which  is  the 
most  deep-seated  of  the  noble  instincts  of  man. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  it  should  always  have 
been  the  prime  element  in  fiction  as  it  was  in 
poetry,  the  literature  of  the  deed  done  in  danger, 
whether  for  war  or  love  or  in  the  contest  with 
the  elements,  the  story  of  man's  gallantry,  trial 
and  rescue  in  every  race  and  under  every  sky. 
To  read  it  is  to  return  to  the  youth  of  the  world 
and  of  life,  to  dip  in  action  and  to  forget,  for 
the  dream  of  action  is  the  most  complete  of 
dreams;  it  "covers  one  all  over,  thoughts  and 
all,"  like  Sancho's  sleep.  Such  romance,  too, 
recreates  the  vigor  and  cheerfulness  of  life,  as  it 
stimulates  youthful  energy;  it  is  refreshing,  not 
merely  by  change,  but  by  its  electrical  charging 
of  the  original  instincts  of  man  and  the  excite- 

141 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

ment  it  imparts  to  them.  Romance  believes  in 
man  and  in  life,  as  youth  does,  and  develops 
positive  power,  assertion  and  daring  in  the 
temperament  that  it  imbues;  it  repairs  the  waste 
of  faith  and  hope  and  resolution,  as  poetry  does, 
and  gives  back  to  instinct  what  thought  has 
taken  from  its  power.  The  war  sagas  of  old, 
the  minstrel's  tale  in  the  baron's  hall,  the 
episodes  and  cycles  of  chivalry  were  such  a 
reinvigoration  in  primitive  days,  and  modern 
romance  in  its  infinitely  varied  forms,  from 
peril  by  sea  and  land  to  peril  for  a  faith,  a 
crown  or  a  cause,  is  the  lineal  descendant  of 
these  and  serves  in  modern  life  a  like  need. 
It  is  that  part  of  literature  where  impulse  has 
the  largest  play;  and  it  gives  freedom  of  move- 
ment and  a  life  in  the  imagination  to  impulses 
that  life  confines;  it  enlarges  life  and  provides 
that  supplement  to  reality  which  human  nature 
requires  for  its  wholeness.  The  inexhaustible 
demand  for  it  shows  that  it  is  grounded  on  a 
real  need. 

The  tale  of  adventure,  in  every  period  of 
literature,  has  been  thus  highly  prized  as  a 
form  of  recreation.  It  blends  naturally  with 
the  tale  of  mystery,  or  the  wonder-tale,  which 

142 


Fiction 

perhaps  holds  the  second  place  in  general 
favor.  In  its  form  of  pure  marvel  the  treasure- 
house  of  this  sort  of  literature  is  The  Arabian 
Nights.  They  suggest  childhood  to  us,  and 
the  childhood  of  a  race  also,  but  the  experience 
of  a  mature  and  old  race  is  curiously  mixed  with 
the  picture  of  life  they  represent.  English 
literature  is  rich  in  translations,  adaptations 
and  imitations  of  this  oriental  play  of  fancy, 
actual  manners  and  wisdom;  they  make  an 
interesting  episode  in  the  history  of  the  English 
genius  so  eagerly  assimilative  of  every  foreign 
strain  and  closely  in  contact  with  the  Oriental 
people.  Pure  marvel,  however,  is  too  baseless 
a  fabric  for  the  English  temperament,  and  the 
tale  of  mystery  in  the  history  of  the  English 
novel  has  preferred  the  form  in  which  the 
mystery  is  solved.  The  episode  of  what  is 
called  the  Gothic  romance,  Walpole's  Castle 
of  Otranto,  with  its  successors  by  Mrs.  Radcliffe 
and  Monk  Lewis,  introduced  the  wonder-story 
that  is  solved,  the  supernatural  there  being 
explained  by  mechanical  means;  it  was  followed 
by  the  mystery  tales  of  Poe,  in  the  next  genera- 
tion, and  the  detective  tale,  but  the  explanation 
involved    in    these   is    a   weakness    in    interest. 

143 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

The  tales  are  discredited  by  the  completeness 
of  the  explanation,  and  it  is  only  by  the  subtlety 
of  the  reasoning  involved  and  something  ab- 
normal in  the  circumstances,  as  in  The  Murders 
in  the  Rue  Morgue,  that  they  maintain  a  lasting 
life  in  literature.  Mystery,  as  an  enduring 
theme,  prefers  its  old  lairs;  in  the  cruder  form 
it  requires  the  Rosicrucians,  the  secret  orders 
and  problems,  the  theosophists  of  India,  and 
leaves  something  still  doubtful  and  inscrutable 
at  the  end;  or  it  contents  itself  with  the  interest 
of  a  well-concealed  plot  which  finally  discloses 
its  secret  to  the  relief  of  the  mind.  Science  and 
the  scientific  spirit  killed  the  wonder-story  in 
its  supernatural  and  merely  marvelous  form, 
its  fairy  and  spirit  play;  nor  has  scientific 
marvel  in  becoming  itself  the  subject  of  imag- 
ination at  all  filled  the  old  place  which  it  emptied 
of  meaning.  The  sea  is  the  natural  abode  of 
mystery,  but  the  sea-novel  has  not  been  espe- 
cially successful  in  retaining  that  element  from 
the  days  before  the  oceans  were  known  and 
charted.  Mystery  is,  however,  so  inherent  in 
life,  and  it  is  so  fascinating  to  men,  that  its 
older  forms  will  long  retain  imaginative  power, 
and   in   the  greatest   novels   in   which   it   takes 

144 


Fiction 

on  a  moral  form,  the  mystery  of  man's  life  and 
fates,  it  will  remain  imbedded,  not  merely  as  an 
artifice  of  the  plot,  but  as  the  substance  of  the 
meaning. 

Mystery  and  romance  do  not  exhaust  the 
interest  of  the  novel  of  recreation,  which  has 
infinite  variety;  but  they  sufficiently  illustrate 
its  nature.  A  third  sort  should,  perhaps,  be 
noticed;  the  tale  which  by  its  representation  of 
quiet  life  and  humble  folks,  like  the  pastoral 
idyl  of  old  days,  acts  rather  as  an  anodyne. 
Such  stories  of  simplicity  are  numerous  in 
literature;  they  are,  indeed,  a  perennial  product 
in  all  lands  and  times  and  often  are  wrought 
with  high  and  enduring  art.  The  old  country 
life  of  England  and  America  affords  them  as  a 
product  of  the  native  soil,  and  in  the  fiction  of 
the  south  of  Europe  they  make  one  of  the 
purest  elements  of  charm,  as  in  the  Sicilian  and 
Sardinian  novel  of  the  day.  The  life  of  people 
near  the  soil,  truly  told  in  its  human  interests, 
secures  almost  without  effort  some  of  the  best 
results  of  art  by  virtue  of  what  it  excludes  and 
the  simplicity  and  truth  of  what  remains. 
Reality,  such  as  this,  mystery  and  romance  are, 
perhaps,  the  most  important  forms  of  recreation 

145 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

afforded  by  the  novel ;  they  are,  at  least,  charac- 
teristic forms.  A  long  catalogue  would  not 
exhaust  the  varieties  of  interest  here  to  be 
found;  the  novel,  as  was  said,  is  the  epitome  of 
modern  life.  At  last  the  question  of  approach 
to  the  novel  is  one  of  individual  liking,  tempera- 
ment, experience,  inclination  and  necessities; 
seriously  read,  the  novel  is  a  study  of  life;  prac- 
tically it  is  a  mode  of  recreation,  entertainment, 
amusement.  Desultory  reading  is  one  of  the 
most  useful  as  well  as  pleasurable  of  literary 
pursuits;  and  nowhere  is  it  more  in  place  or 
more  fruitful  than  in  the  novel. 


146 


Lamb 


CHAPTER  VI 

OTHER   PROSE    FORMS 

THE  principal  supports  of  imaginative 
literature,  as  has  been  indicated,  are 
biography,  history  and  philosophy.  In  pure 
imagination  ideality  is  the  characteristic  product 
of  the  art,  and  measures  its  power  and  success; 
next  to  it  in  literary  interest  is  personality. 
Those  books,  of  whatever  sort,  that  contain 
personality  in  interesting  forms  best  illustrate 
life  and  are  most  attractive  and  enduring  in 
minor  literature.  Biography  succeeds  best 
when  the  subject  of  it  and  the  circumstances  of 
his  life  and  the  events  of  his  career  are  de- 
scribed with  the  closest  approximation  to  imag- 
inative methods,  so  that  he  lives  and  is  seen 
with  the  clear  vitality  of  characters  in  a  novel. 
It  was  Boswell's  power  to  render  character 
by  dialogue  and  anecdote  that  made  his  life  of 
Johnson  a  classic  biography.  There  are  few 
lives  that  even  approach  that  work  as  a  truthful 

147 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

picture  of  a  man  in  his  peculiar  individuality. 
Autobiography  is  generally  a  surer  way  to  vivid 
personality,  and  the  great  autobiographies  are 
sincere  or  unconscious  confessions;  of  the  first 
type  Franklin  gave  a  memorable  example,  and 
of  the  second  Pepys'  Diary  is  the  immortal 
instance.  Letters  are  an  autobiographic  form 
essentially,  but  they  usually  give  a  picture  of 
the  society  of  the  writer,  and  are  often  as  in- 
teresting for  what  they  contain  of  the  age  as 
for  what  they  reveal  of  the  person.  Wal pole's 
letters  are  such  a  view  of  a  period  of  English 
culture;  and  the  letters  of  Gray,  Cowper  and 
Fitzgerald,  each  in  his  own  social  group,  have 
such  a  double  value,  social  and  personal.  The 
letters  of  Byron  and  of  Shelley  both  contain 
more  of  the  personality  of  those  poets  than  has 
ever  passed  into  any  of  the  many  lives  of  each 
of  them.  In  biography,  generally,  which  avails 
itself  of  letters,  as  one  element  of  the  story,  the 
reader  is  content  with  a  diluted  personality, 
and  finds  the  subject  set  forth,  not  directly, 
but  by  narrative  and  criticism,  with  reflected 
lights  from  the  environment  and  social  group  of 
the  subject;  but  whatever  is  human,  if  it  be 
sincerely  described,  is  so  surely  interesting  that 

148 


Other  Prose  Forms 

biography  has  long  been  a  large  part  of  second- 
ary literature.  It  has  the  advantage  to  some 
minds,  less  capable  of  seizing  truth  abstractly 
in  ideal  persons,  of  bringing  to  them  something 
that  is  known  to  be  real.  It  has  the  felicity 
also  of  illustrating  the  richness  of  life  in  refined 
or  capable  natures,  and  of  the  excellence  of  men 
and  women  in  careers  perhaps  not  of  remark- 
able distinction,  but  of  great  usefulness  and 
noble  in  service.  That  biography  which  is 
rather  a  portion  of  history  and  sets  forth  sur- 
passing character,  such  as  Plutarch's  Lives,  is 
not  far  below  heroic  poetry  in  its  power  of  ideal 
type;  and  the  far  larger  portion  which  relates 
the  lives  of  men  notable  for  their  experience, 
for  individual  talent  or  social  service  or  for 
romance  in  their  fortunes,  is  not  far  removed 
from  character  in  fiction.  Choice  in  biography 
is  commonly  a  matter  of  accident,  an  affair  of 
private  preference  or  interest;  but  its  chief  use 
is  to  enrich  the  reader's  sense  of  character  and 
the  value  he  places  on  human  qualities,  on  per- 
sonality. Biography,  too,  unlocks  the  sym- 
pathies, and  often  exercises  an  intimate  and 
direct  awakening  influence,  especially  upon 
practical  natures  less  open  to  ideal  enthusiasm. 

149 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

Those  sporadic  books  which  obtain  the  place 
of  classics  in  literature  often  seem  to  owe  their 
vogue  to  a  biographical  element  in  them,  in  so 
far  as  they  are  representative  of  the  peculiar 
mind  and  tastes  of  their  authors.  The  type 
is  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  Walton's 
Complete  Angler  or  Browne's  Religio  Medici, 
or  the  writings  of  the  modern  American  "Auto- 
crat," Dr.  Holmes.  They  contain  a  miscellany 
of  matters,  interesting  in  themselves,  but  which 
have  passed  through  the  individuality  of  their 
authors  and  acquired  a  certain  human  unity 
and  new  significance  from  a  living  contact, 
even  when  the  matter  itself  is  antiquarian  or 
remote,  or  merely  singular  in  a  humoristic 
sense.  They  give  the  mind  of  the  man,  and 
are  distinguished  by  originality  such  as  has  its 
only  source  in  character.  Enjoyment  of  them 
depends  on  some  special  aptitude  of  the  reader 
for  appreciating  the  kind  of  mind  involved, 
and  some  intellectual  sympathy  with  the  matter 
which  takes  its  stamp.  To  give  the  mind  of 
the  man  is  a  distinction  for  any  book.  It  is 
of  more  interest  when  the  mind  is  typical,  as 
Wellington's  letters  give  the  mind  of  the  soldier. 
When  the  mind  takes  on  great  ideal  breadth, 

150 


Other  Prose  Forms 

the  book  becomes  a  classic  of  the  world,  as  in 
Thomas  a  Kempis'  Imitatio  Christi  or  St. 
Francis'  Fioretti  which  yield  the  mind  of  the 
Christian  and  of  the  saint.  It  often  happens 
that  biography,  without  being  widely  inclusive 
of  a  human  type,  nevertheless  reflects  human 
experience  in  narrower  bands  and  gives  the 
spectrum  of  special  moods  of  human  nature. 
The  lives  of  the  saints,  and  religious  biography 
in  general,  owe  much  of  their  interest  to  this 
reflection  of  private  experience,  and  more  bril- 
liant or  pure  expression  of  moods  already 
partially  known  or  latent  in  the  reader;  as 
heroic  lives  appeal  to  instinctive  ambition  and 
desire  for  adventure,  these  appeal  to  the  in- 
stinctive piety  of  men.  To  give  the  life  in  a 
person  is  the  quality  in  these  books  which 
makes  them  commanding.  Wherever  the  sub- 
ject is  taken  up,  it  is  personality  that  is  the 
secret  of  all  such  literature.  It  is  sometimes 
represented  that  personality,  especially  in  the 
autobiographic  sense,  is  modern  in  literature, 
and  specifically  that  it  was  a  discovery  of 
Petrarch;  but,  though  the  principle  has  had  a 
great  career  in  modern  writing,  so  broad  a  state- 
ment must  be  doubtfully  regarded.     Lives  were 

151 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

a  favorite  form  of  ancient  literature.  The 
Commentaries  of  Caesar  are  not  so  different  from 
Wellington's  Correspondence,  the  Meditations 
of  Marcus  Aurelius  from  the  Imitation  of 
Christy  the  Confessions  of  St.  Augustine  from 
those  of  Rousseau;  Pythagoras  and  Epicurus 
were  men  who  made  an  immense  personal 
impression,  and  the  power  of  a  personality  as 
well  as  of  a  doctrine  made  the  victory  of  Chris- 
tianity over  the  third  part  of  the  world.  In  the 
centuries  of  Roman  greatness  just  before  and 
after  Christ  personality  was  a  main  object  of 
literary  attention,  and  probably  interest  in  it 
did  not  vary  much  from  that  felt  in  the  Renais- 
sance, though  the  record  of  it  was  seldom  put 
forth  autobiographically.  It  is  probably  an 
error  to  think  that  any  form  of  individualism 
was  unknown  to  the  Roman  world,  and  our 
biographic  records  of  antiquity  are  on  the 
whole  rich.  We  know  nearly  as  much,  for 
example,  of  Sophocles  as  of  Shakespeare. 

Travel,  which  is  popularly  so  fascinating  a 
branch  of  literature,  is  a  near  neighbor  to  biog- 
raphy. The  character  of  the  traveler  and  the 
human  interest  of  his  journey  make  a  large  part 
of  the  charm  of  what  he  tells.     Everything  is 

152 


Other  Prose  Forms 

seen  through  his  eyes,  his  curiosity  controls 
the  view,  his  pursuits  confine  the  attention. 
Herodotus  was  one  of  the  best  of  travelers,  as 
eager  to  know  men  and  manners  as  Ulysses, 
full  of  the  romance  of  things  freshly  known;  a 
more  interesting  book  was  hardly  handed  down 
by  antiquity.  Travel  attracts  the  reader  mainly 
by  the  unknown,  and  perhaps  the  best  of  travel 
is  now  historic;  for  the  story  of  travel  has 
always  attended  the  story  of  national  greatness. 
The  mass  of  it  is  that  which  was  written  in  the 
years  of  the  discovery  of  the  world  beyond 
Europe  on  all  its  horizons,  and  for  English 
readers  is  to  be  found  in  the  great  collections  of 
Hakluyt  and  others.  In  a  later  time  the  story 
of  exploration  in  Africa  and  Asia  and  about  the 
Pole  contains  its  most  vivid  chapters  and 
blends  the  pleasure  of  new  knowledge  with 
individual  adventure.  A  finer  literary  quality, 
however,  belongs  to  writers  who  are  not  ex- 
plorers, but  who  in  romantic  lands  or  strange 
environments  feel  and  render  the  local  color 
and  incident  and  novelty  of  what  is  before 
them,  and,  in  a  literary  sense,  are  masters  of 
atmosphere.  The  French  are  good  travelers, 
and  none  are  more  expert  in  modern  days  in 

153 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

giving  atmosphere.  The  literary  treatment  of 
travel  is  more  a  French  than  an  English  art. 
Kinglake's  long  famous  Eothen  was  an  excellent 
narrative,  strong  and  vivid  in  rendering  the 
eastern  scene  and  its  figures,  but  he  had 
neither  the  subtilty  nor  the  sympathy  of  the 
southern  temperament,  and  none  of  the  imag- 
inativeness of  the  French  masters  such  as  Loti. 
Irving  is,  perhaps,  the  best  of  our  travelers  of 
the  literary  habit,  who  use  their  material  with 
an  eye  to  its  effect  as  an  intimate  imaginative 
portrayal.  His  writings  on  special  topics  realize 
the  romance  of  the  land,  the  figures  of  knight 
and  Moor  the  life  of  an  historically  enchanted 
soil;  and  even  in  England  he  is  still  the  best  of 
American  travelers  for  the  sentiment  of  the 
scene.  Literary  travel  is,  however,  hardly  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  field.  It  is  rather 
in  simpler  narratives,  that  detail  the  truth  of 
the  country  districts  of  Europe  or  the  adventure 
of  some  long  ride  in  the  East  or  the  South,  that 
most  pleasure  is  to  be  found;  and  though  past 
voyages  were  the  novel  of  travel,  and  their 
literature  was  immense,  it  is  seldom  now  that 
any  voyage  is  interesting  except  it  be  scientific. 
Anthropology  and  archaeology,  in  their  attempt 

154 


Other  Prose  Forms 

to  realize  primitive  life  and  past  epochal  civi- 
lization, embody  a  large  element  of  travel  in 
very  interesting  forms.  The  reader  who  pur- 
sues any  of  these  lines,  scientific,  literary  or 
adventurous,  enlarges  his  horizon  materially, 
and  few  kinds  of  reading  are  more  useful.  To 
know  ourselves  better  through  literature  is  not 
difficult,  but  to  know  what  is  not  ourselves  is  an 
exceedingly  hard  task.  It  is  safer  to  distrust 
one's  impression  of  the  foreign,  the  distant  and 
the  long  past,  however  exact  it  may  appear; 
but  though  the  result  may  be  imperfect,  there  is 
no  better  means  than  by  intelligent  and  sym- 
pathetic books  of  travel  to  free  the  mind  from 
the  intolerance  that  belongs  to  it  by  nature  and 
to  lessen  the  narrowness  inherent  in  race,  faith 
and  habit. 

History  is  a  province  by  itself,  and  it  has 
been  much  contested  whether  it  should  be 
regarded  more  as  science  or  more  as  literature. 
A  large  part  of  history,  as  it  has  been  written 
in  the  past,  nevertheless,  is  of  literary  quality, 
and  many  historians  would  have  been  tenacious 
of  its  literary  rights.  It  is  clear  from  the  dis- 
cussion that  history  with  a  literary  intention 
has   certain   traits   of   its   own.     The   question 

155 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

here  is  only  what  history  should  be  preferred 
by  readers  whose  primary  interest  is  in  litera- 
ture. It  is  not  a  matter  merely  of  rhetorical 
style  or  the  mode  of  presentation,  but  of  the 
ends  sought  and  the  methods  of  construction 
followed  by  the  historian.  He  endeavors  to 
reproduce  the  past;  but  as  the  story  is  passed 
through  his  personality,  it  suffers  the  modi- 
fication due  to  that  medium  and  is  recreated  in 
certain  lines  of  choice,  insight  and  judgment 
belonging  to  the  historian;  it  wears  the  colors 
of  his  mind.  Thucydides,  who  first  undertook 
to  write  history  philosophically,  presented  it 
in  a  highly  imaginative  form,  by  persons  and 
events,  dramatically.  Macaulay,  the  most  ab- 
sorbing modern  narrator,  makes  of  his  work 
an  impassioned  plea  with  the  conscious  re- 
sources of  an  ancient  orator,  picturing  the 
scene,  making  the  persons  alive,  appealing  to 
the  sympathies  of  the  reader.  In  Robertson, 
Prescott  and  Motley,  history  is  a  stately  pro- 
cession. The  works  of  the  more  recent  his- 
torians of  the  scientific  school,  however  more 
useful  they  may  be  in  the  field  of  knowledge, 
do  not  enter  popularly  into  literature;  they  may 
clarify  the  past  with  which  they  deal,  but  they  do 

156 


Other  Prose  Forms 

not  permanently  embody  national  tradition  and 
morality  ideally  to  anything  like  the  same 
degree  or  in  the  same  way  as  the  older  histories; 
they  lack  the  imaginative  power,  and  are  hence 
ineffective  in  literature.  The  reader  who  makes 
a  literary  demand  desires  primarily  the  human 
truth  of  history,  its  course  of  great  events 
shown  through  famous  characters,  or  its  picture 
of  the  life  of  cities  and  of  the  common  lot  given 
in  their  human  phenomena;  he  asks  for  the 
old  spectacle  of  men,  or  masses  of  men,  doing 
and  suffering;  history  has  a  literary  interest 
for  him  in  proportion  as  it  becomes  epical. 
Other  kinds  of  history  may  be  more  exact  and 
detailed,  and  enter  upon  parts  of  the  field  that 
dramatic  and  picturesque  history  ignores;  but 
they  have  less  human  truth,  or  present  truth  in 
a  less  human  form.  Thucydides,  Livy  and 
Tacitus  present  this  truth  in  an  enduring  form, 
and  no  literature  is  more  imperishable  in 
interest;  the  chroniclers  of  the  Crusades,  such 
as  Froissart,  composed  vivid  pictures  of  events 
which  they  witnessed  that  are  incomparable 
portrayals  of  character,  scene  and  the  pageantry 
of  stirring  life  in  their  day;  and  the  historians 
who  have  been  famous  in  English  follow  this 

157 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

literary  tradition.  Gibbon  was,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  of  them  by  virtue  of  the  magnitude  of 
his  work,  The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  It  is  a  great  history,  and  though  it 
may  be  corrected  and  supplemented  by  the 
researches  of  scholarship,  all  such  labor  is  of 
the  nature  of  a  comment  on  the  text;  the  work 
itself  will  never  be  supplanted.  In  proportion 
as  the  literary  tradition  is  departed  from,  his- 
tory relegates  itself  to  the  field  of  scholarship 
and  becomes  a  department  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge rather  than  of  literature. 

Philosophy  in  the  sense  of  metaphysics  plays 
but  a  small  part  in  literary  education,  though 
in  the  comprehension  of  the  final  thought  of 
Wordsworth,  Shelley  and  Tennyson  some 
tincture  of  philosophy,  such  as  these  poets 
themselves  had,  is  required,  and  it  is  con- 
venient in  other  minor  parts  of  English  poetry. 
Some  acquaintance  with  Platonic  conceptions 
is  especially  to  be  desired,  because  they  are  a 
part  of  the  tradition  of  English  poetry.  But 
the  philosophy  which  most  supports  imagina- 
tive literature  is  rather  what  is  sometimes 
called  wisdom-literature,  proverbial  sentences 
and,  in  general,  ethical  thought,  playing  about 

158 


Other  Prose  Forms 

the  nature  of  action,  conscience,  responsibility, 
the  frailties  of  human  nature,  the  issues  of 
right  and  wrong,  the  morality  of  life.  Such 
knowledge  in  English  has  mainly  flowed  from 
the  Bible  and  passes  current  in  the  general 
mind  without  much  distinction  of  literary  stamp. 
Franklin  and  Emerson,  however,  are  illustrious 
American  names  in  this  field,  and  in  English 
the  type  is  found  in  Bacon's  Essays.  Greater 
books  than  these  are  the  Imitation  of  Christ 
and  Marcus  Aurelius'  Meditations,  already 
mentioned,  and  on  a  lower  plane  Montaigne's 
Essays.  The  French,  unlike  the  English,  are 
peculiarly  rich  in  books  of  maxims,  pensees  and 
characters,  and  can  show  a  long  series  of  bril- 
liant and  talented  masters  in  worldly  and 
moral  dicta  which  make  a  unique  and  charac- 
teristic part  of  their  classic  literature.  The 
sense  of  the  weight  of  meaning  in  the  phrase, 
such  as  Burke  was  a  master  of,  and  of  the  salt 
of  truth,  is  one  of  the  last  fruits  of  literary  study 
and  requires  maturity  both  of  mind  and  of  ex- 
perience. Such  literature  in  an  express  form 
is  consequently  rarely  sought  by  the  reader  for 
its  own  sake  and  is  commonly  forced  on  him 
by  its  fame  rather  than  by  his  original  liking 

159 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

in  the  first  instance.  Ethical  knowledge  is 
generally  implicit  in  the  reader's  character  and 
prejudices,  in  his  instinctive  judgment,  and 
plays  its  part  in  literary  appreciation  involun- 
tarily and  without  his  being  aware  of  it  except 
in  its  results. 

The  essay  opens  a  province  of  literature 
almost  as  broad  and  varied  as  that  of  the  novel. 
It  may  have  any  subject  and  treat  it  to  any  end. 
The  familiar  essay  in  particular  offers  the  most 
free  play  to  the  personality  of  the  author,  who 
shows  his  own  tastes  in  it  with  naturalness  and 
brings  forward  whatever  of  interest  he  has  found. 
It  also  corresponds  to  the  greatest  disengage- 
ment of  the  reader's  mind.  One  tires  of  long 
and  serious  pursuit  and  studious  zeal  in  any 
subject;  here  is  the  opportunity  for  wandering, 
for  the  avocations  of  literature,  for  diversion. 
In  the  essay  the  author  gives  his  companion- 
ship to  the  reader  on  a  footing  of  friendly 
mutual  interest  in  some  passing  matters  as  in 
conversation.  The  familiar  essay  is  best  when 
it  approaches  this  form  of  talk  with  the  reader, 
and  solicits  him  without  emphasis  or  resistance 
to  a  brief  partnership  in  social  pleasure.  The 
master   of   the   mode,    it   would   be   commonly 

160 


Other  Prose  Forms 

allowed,  is  Charles  Lamb.  In  Elia  there  is  the 
first  requisite,  a  richly  human  personality. 
Lamb  was  a  poet  and  a  humorist,  and  thus 
yoked  two  elements  of  the  most  delightful  play 
of  life,  sentiment  and  fun,  in  a  companionable 
nature.  He  was  fond  of  humanity  and  saw 
the  spectacle  of  its  daily  affairs  and  its  ordinary 
guises  with  sympathy  that  passes  from  laughter 
to  pathos  almost  without  knowing  the  change, 
so  absorbing  and  real  is  the  human  aspect  of  it 
all ;  he  is  full  of  reminiscences,  of  life  lived  in  his 
own  neighborhood,  even  in  his  own  home,  and 
gives  his  reflections  and  anecdotes  with  intimacy ; 
he  takes  the  reader  into  his  life  and  gives  him 
his  confidence.  Even  in  the  purely  literary 
parts  of  his  work  he  never  loses  the  sense  that 
the  poets  and  the  old  writers  of  golden  prose 
are  a  part  of  himself,  and  to  the  reader  they 
become  phases  of  Lamb's  personality  and  are 
more  valued  for  showing  his  likings  than  for 
their  private  worth.  In  every  essay  of  Elia, 
whatever  the  topic,  it  is  the  company  of  Lamb 
that  makes  the  pleasure.  He  escapes  the  for- 
mality of  autobiography  and  the  fragmentariness 
of  letters,  but  keeps  the  intimate  charm  of  the 
one  and  the  discursive  happiness  of  the  other; 

161 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

as  one  reads,  it  seems  the  talk  of  a  man  that  is 
not  quite  soliloquy  nor  yet  is  it  conversation, 
and  it  gives  more  than  thought  and  anecdote,  — 
it  gives  the  presence  of  the  man,  his  idiosyn- 
crasy; the  tones  of  his  voice  are  felt  in  the 
cadences  of  the  style,  and  the  moods  of  his 
eyes  in  the  sly  humors  and  pathetic  stops  of  the 
page.  It  is  not  strange  that  Lamb  is  so  much 
beloved  since  he  has  this  power  of  silent  famili- 
arity in  so  penetrating  and  agreeable  a  way, 
and  his  nature  was  itself  so  refined  and  touched 
with  human  friendliness.  It  is  the  prime 
quality  of  the  familiar  essayist  to  be  able  to  give 
himself  to  the  reader  thus  and  to  be  received. 
In  no  other  author  is  the  trait  so  clear. 

De  Quincey  illustrates  better  the  miscellane- 
ous power  of  the  essay  and  its  capacity  to  turn 
itself  to  many  uses  both  of  instruction  and 
entertainment.  His  personality  is  hardly  less 
felt  through  the  living  matter  and  vivid  style 
of  his  work  than  is  Lamb's  in  his  more  kindly 
way.  Here,  too,  the  most  engaging  part  is 
autobiographical;  and  though  much  of  this 
is  contained  in  the  larger  works,  in  particular 
The  Confessions  of  an  English  Ojrium-Eafcr, 
yet  this  book  is  really  a  group  of  essays,  and 

162 


Other  Prose  Forms 

written  in  the  manner  of  the  essayist.  Indeed 
De  Quincey  knew  no  other  mode  of  writing, 
and  whether  his  subject  was  metaphysics  or 
antiquity  or  a  tale,  he  made  an  essay  of  it.  His 
recollection,  mingled  here  and  there  with  the 
text,  are  of  the  same  quality  as  Lamb's  pictures 
of  his  school  days,  and  the  theme  of  revery, 
the  dream  touched  with  sentiment,  is  common 
to  both.  De  Quincey  excels  by  his  pictorial 
power,  and  especially  in  that  fantasy  which 
paints  the  void,  and  in  the  imaginative  sym- 
bolism which  belongs  more  properly  to  visible 
art;  even  when  it  is  the  mind  that  acts,  it  is  the 
eye  that  dreams,  as,  to  take  the  great  instance, 
in  the  almost  hieratic  figures  of  The  Three 
Ladies  of  Sorrow.  He  excels  also  by  his  mar- 
velous verbal  eloquence,  with  its  exquisite 
sonorous  and  melodic  effects,  its  march  of 
climax  and  question,  its  vivid  images  of  figures 
and  situations,  while  sound  and  color  seem 
as  much  a  part  of  the  work  as  in  music  or 
painting.  Such  passages  as  are  to  be  found 
in  The  Caesars  or  in  Joan  of  Arc  are  hardly  to 
be  matched  elsewhere  for  rich  stylistic  effects, 
and  for  the  full  flow  and  powerful  molding  of 
language  to  the  uses  of  the  voice  which  makes 

163 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

eloquence.  In  the  miscellaneous  works  of  De 
Quincey  it  is  such  passages  found  at  random, 
and  also  the  dozen  pieces  of  various  kinds  of 
interest  in  which  picturesqueness  is  sustained 
throughout,  that  stand  prominently  forth;  but 
the  subtlety  of  others,  the  extraordinary  mental 
activity  displayed,  afford  an  interest  hardly 
less  absorbing  to  the  intelligence  than  the 
better  known  pieces  are  to  the  imagination. 
De  Quincey  is  becoming,  perhaps,  a  somewhat 
neglected  author,  as  it  is  quite  natural  that  he 
should  be;  but  no  author  better  shows  the 
versatility  of  the  essay,  its  adaptability  to  a 
variously  stored  and  widely  curious  mind,  its 
supple  response  to  a  flexible  hand;  and  in  the 
modes  of  thought,  color  and  sound  he  was  a 
master  of  intellectual  and  imaginative  style, 
while  the  substance  of  his  work  retains  great 
literary  power.  At  the  end,  however,  he  leaves, 
as  the  best  essayists  always  do,  a  personal 
impression  and  the  sense  of  intellectual  com- 
panionship. 

The  essayists  pass  quickly  away,  because  their 
service  is  for  the  most  part  a  contemporary 
matter,  engaged  in  observation  and  comment 
on  the  ideas,  interests  and  things  of  the  day. 

164 


Other  Prose  Forms 

Carlyle,  like  De  Quincey,  begins  to  be  disre- 
garded. Though  he  wrote  history,  the  more 
characteristic  expression  of  his  genius  was  in 
his  earlier  life  in  the  form  of  the  essay  and  of 
Sartor  Resartus,  which  is  substantially  and  in 
manner  the  work  of  an  essayist.  He  illustrates 
the  essay  of  the  Quarterlies  that  is  now  out  of 
date,  with  its  long  Presbyterian  wind,  its 
omniscience,  dogmatism  and  belligerency,  but 
also  with  its  high  intellectual  quality  and  sound 
moral  fiber.  In  Carlyle  the  type  had  most 
literary  power.  He  made  it,  after  the  way  of 
the  essayist,  the  channel  of  his  personality,  and 
showed  increasingly  the  eccentric  and  repellant 
traits  of  his  temperament,  to  which  the  Teu- 
tonism  of  his  style  and  matter  gave  at  first  a 
grotesque  quality.  It  is  likely  that  this  trait, 
which  hindered  his  acceptance  by  the  public 
at  the  start,  already  proves  a  disqualification 
in  the  end  as  well,  and  is  one  reason  for  the 
lessening  of  his  vogue.  His  personality  is  not 
attractive,  and  the  dress  in  which  it  is  put  forth 
is  still  less  so;  but  it  is  a  powerful  personality, 
and  its  effect  is  the  greater  because,  in  the  main 
part  of  his  characteristic  work,  it  is  through  the 
praise    and    apotheosis    of    personality    in    sur- 

165 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

passing  men  that  it  is  put  forth  and  reflected. 
He  wrote  of  the  hero  in  every  part  of  the  field, 
and  made  hero-worship  a  kind  of  initiation 
into  his  later  more  abstract  doctrines  of  the 
divine  right  of  force,  the  aristocracy  of  genius, 
the  incompetency  of  masses,  and  all  the  rest  of 
the  reactionary  gospel  he  preached  in  his  vio- 
lent denunciations  of  modern  democracy.  The 
reader  need  not  accompany  him  to  the  end; 
but  in  the  earlier  great  essays,  such  as  those  on 
Burns,  Goethe,  Voltaire,  and  the  like,  and  more 
particularly  in  Sartor  Resartus,  which  is  always 
an  illuminating  and  invigorating  book,  he  finds 
views  of  life  and  its  workings  in  which  philoso- 
phy takes  more  effective  possession  of  the  essay 
than  in  any  other  writer.  It  is,  too,  philosophy 
in  a  highly  imaginative  form,  whether  stated 
in  a  system,  if  one  can  give  that  name  to  what 
is  hardly  more  than  one  huge  metaphor,  in 
Sartor  Resartus,  or  introduced  as  a  comment 
in  the  critical  biographical  essays  and  the 
chapters  on  heroism.  The  interest  is,  of  course, 
predominantly  moral  or  social,  but  it  finds 
literary  expression,  is  blended  with  great  figures 
and  great  events,  with  epical  elements,  with 
surpassing  characters,  with  human  truth,  and 

166 


Other  Prose  Forms 

it  never  fails  to  be  picturesque,  fervid,  glowing 
with  conviction.  The  genius  of  Carlyle  was, 
like  De  Quincey's,  primarily  one  for  expression; 
it  is  by  its  literary  quality  that  his  work  con- 
tinues to  make  its  appeal;  among  the  essayists 
he  is  the  moralist,  the  social  philosopher,  whose 
material  is  rather  human  life  doing  and  suffer- 
ing than  any  abstract  principle,  and  who  sees 
it  through  the  imagination. 

Lamb,  De  Quincey  and  Carlyle  illustrate  the 
essay  in  the  three  fields  of  sympathy,  imagina- 
tion and  morality,  and  they  are  excellent  types 
of  the  English  handling  of  the  form  which  is 
very  free.  The  varieties  of  it  cannot  be  ex- 
hausted in  a  list.  The  tradition,  perhaps,  still 
is  that  the  early  essayists  of  the  Queen  Anne  age 
are  the  classical  exemplars  of  it,  especially 
Addison  and  Steele;  in  both  the  reader  feels  the 
personality  of  the  writer,  as  he  also  does  in 
Goldsmith,  somewhat  with  the  intimate  touch 
that  Lamb  gives,  and  when  these  three  writers 
have  human  character  for  their  subject,  their 
charm  lasts;  but  what  really  survives  of  them 
can  be  included  in  a  small  volume.  The  Eng- 
lish scholar  will  be  acquainted  with  the  essay 
of   the    eighteenth    century    and    appreciate    it, 

167 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

but  the  reader  will  commonly  spare  it  and  turn 
to  the  quite  different  essayists  of  a  later  time, 
to  the  measured  literary  talk  of  Arnold  or  the 
exquisite  portraits  of  Pater,  who  are  the  two 
last  well-established  names  in  England,  and  to 
Lowell  and  Emerson  among  Americans,  both 
of  whom  in  different  ways  were  masters  of  the 
form.  The  essay  keeps  pace  with  the  novel  as 
the  kind  of  writing  that  seems  best  suited  to 
the  uses  of  our  public,  and  like  that  varies  from 
instruction  to  mere  entertainment  and  takes 
every  color  from  the  artistic  to  the  humorous, 
reflecting  the  entire  range  of  literary  tastes  and 
pursuits. 

There  are  other  forms  of  prose,  but  these  are 
the  main  forms  in  which  a  literary  value  is 
found  and  sufficiently  illustrate  the  nature  of 
literature,  the  objects  of  its  attention  and  the 
modes  of  its  appeal  in  its  lesser  phases.  In  the 
mass  of  miscellaneous  books  there  is  often  the 
characteristic  material  of  literature  and  a  literary 
treatment  which  make  the  author's  work  in- 
teresting, though  it  may  not  reach  any  high 
degree  of  distinction  and  may  remain  practi- 
cally unknown.  It  is  a  common  experience  of 
the    reader,    especially    if    he    have    desultory 

168 


Other  Prose  Forms 

habits,  to  find  such  volumes  and  to  profit  by 
them.  It  is  well  to  read  books  that  have  an 
established  place  and  authors  of  reputation; 
but  an  open  welcome  and  a  broad  tolerance 
also  have  their  advantages,  and  there  is  often 
a  freshness  in  the  unknown  writer,  a  sense  of 
discovery  and  a  heightened  interest  that  are 
lacking  in  the  books  that  all  men  read.  In 
books  of  character  and  observation,  especially, 
one  finds  this  treasure-trove,  which  wins  the 
reader  more  frequently  by  the  wealth  of  its 
material  than  by  the  literary  treatment,  for  a 
writer  has  often  genuine  matter  who  lacks  the 
skill  to  adorn  it  in  the  telling.  A  plain  tale, 
if  it  be  originally  interesting,  always  holds  its 
interest.  When  so  much  is  written  as  in  our 
day,  a  great  portion  must  have  only  a  restricted 
vogue,  but  its  excellence  for  those  who  find  it 
is  the  same.  In  these  humbler  walks  of  litera- 
ture there  is  much  more  of  actual  entertainment 
and  profit  than  is  commonly  acknowledged. 
The  interest  is  the  same  as  that  of  a  classic, 
though  it  may  not  be  so  finely  embodied,  and 
the  vitalizing  power  is  the  same,  though  it  may 
not  be  so  rich.  The  better  way  is  to  give  a 
hearing  to  every  promising  book,  without  too 

169 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

proud  a  scanning  of  its  source  and  stamp,  and 
to  have  familiar  acquaintance  with  many  books 
outside  the  sacred  presence  of  standard  litera- 
ture. One  acquires  thus  a  truer  sense  of  the 
value  of  the  classic,  and  at  the  same  time  keeps 
in  current  touch  with  his  contemporaries;  nor 
is  he  really  assured  of  his  own  discrimination 
until  he  finds  books  for  himself  and  knows  that 
they  are  sound.  The  power  to  appreciate 
literature  does  not  involve  its  constant  exercise 
upon  the  highest  examples.  The  essential 
thing  is  to  know  what  makes  literary  quality, 
what  are  the  ends  and  means  of  the  art,  what 
are  the  modes  of  intimacy  with  its  works; 
when  this  is  known  —  and  it  is  best  known 
through  standard  authors  —  the  best  use  of  the 
knowledge  is,  perhaps,  not  to  master  a  past 
literature  in  its  great  compass  and  detail,  but 
to  apply  it  to  the  contemporary  world  in  the 
natural  course  of  reading  what  attracts  our 
tastes  and  draws  out  our  sympathies  in  our 
own  time.  It  is  natural  for  a  book  to  die;  few 
l)ooks  that  are  old  have  a  vital  connection  with 
life  as  it  now  is,  but  these  if  they  appeal  to  us 
are  favorites,  the  books  to  which  one  returns 
and   that   we   regard   as   silent   friends   of   life, 

170 


Other  Prose  Forms 

comrades  of  our  fortunes  and  our  moods;  they 
are  strong  in  our  affection  because  they  are  a 
part  of  our  past.  Such  books  stand  apart  on  a 
shelf  of  their  own,  and  are  mainly  classics  with 
some  humble  companions;  not  to  know  litera- 
ture through  its  length  and  breadth  and  to  be 
wise  judges  in  its  presence,  but  to  gather  this 
little  shelf-ful,  is  the  best  fruit  of  literary  appre- 
ciation. 


171 


CHAPTER  VII 

PRACTICAL   SUGGESTIONS 

LITERARY  counsel  is  not  far  to  seek. 
The  apparatus  for  literary  study  is  plenti- 
ful ;  manuals,  histories,  commentaries  and  guides 
to  the  choice  of  books  exist  in  profusion.  There 
is  an  embarrassment  of  such  riches.  The  objec- 
tion to  these  is  that,  of  the  two  traditional  ends 
of  literature,  to  please  and  to  instruct,  they  take 
note  too  exclusively  of  the  second.  The  two 
ends  should  not  be  made  to  neutralize  each 
other;  yet  this  is  often  the  case.  Excess  of 
instruction  leads  to  one's  being  bored;  excess 
of  pleasure  leads  to  frivolity.  It  is,  perhaps, 
better  to  consider  the  process  rather  than  the 
ends.  Literature  is  a  key  to  one's  own  heart; 
it  is  also  a  key  to  the  lives  of  others;  there  are 
other  ways  of  learning  one's  own  nature  and 
human  nature  in  general,  but  outside  of  direct 
experience  and  observation  literature  is  the 
principal    means    of    obtaining    knowledge    of 

172 


Practical  Suggestions 

human  life.  The  most  efficient  form  of  the 
knowledge  is  that  which  art  gives,  storing  it  in 
typical  examples  in  imaginative  literature;  but 
it  also  is  found  where  art  is  imperfectly  applied, 
as  in  the  subsidiary  forms  of  literature,  or  even 
where  art  is  absent  and  truth  is  set  forth  barely 
and  abstractly.  Imaginative  art  condenses  and 
recreates  experience  in  order  to  clarify  it  for  the 
reason  and  magnetize  it  for  the  affections  and 
sympathies.  It  seeks  to  include  all  of  life  and 
know  it  in  its  essentials.  Instruction  proceeds 
from  the  matter,  pleasure  from  the  form.  The 
definition  is  somewhat  narrow,  however,  and 
too  antithetical,  taking  too  exclusive  note  of 
merely  aesthetic  pleasure,  whereas  the  pleasure 
arising  from  literature  springs  also  from  other 
than  formal  sources  and  is  mixed  of  many 
kinds.  The  knowledge  of  human  life  is  ante- 
cedent to  the  pleasure  flowing  from  such  knowl- 
edge in  any  form,  and  is  the  condition  without 
which  there  can  be  no  pleasure.  The  acquisi- 
tion and  interpretation  of  experience  is  the  core 
of  the  process,  which  looks  to  a  broad  compre- 
hension and  penetration  of  the  nature  of  hu- 
manity and  its  career  in  the  past  and  the  present. 
The  starting  point,  however,  is  the  individual, 

173 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

the  reader  himself.  It  is  this  fact  that  makes 
it  difficult  to  lay  down  a  definite  rule  in  literary 
study.  The  personality  of  the  reader  is  never 
to  be  lost  sight  of.  He  has  special  aptitudes 
and  tastes  which  make  one  book  rather  than 
another,  one  kind  of  literature  rather  than 
another,  one  epoch  rather  than  another,  a  better 
mode  of  access  to  experience,  a  stronger  stimu- 
lus to  the  imagination,  a  more  vitalizing  power 
to  his  whole  being.  Literature  unlocks  power 
of  life  in  the  individual  as  well  as  gives  knowl- 
edge of  life;  it  is  best,  in  any  instance,  when 
the  two  are  one  act  and  the  knowledge  is  given 
by  the  unlocking  of  power  and  as  a  consequence 
of  it.  The  personality  of  the  individual  is  the 
prime  element  in  determining  what  is  best  for 
his  growth  in  order  that  there  may  always  be 
the  greatest  vital  connection  in  his  study  of  life 
between  himself  and  his  instruments;  they 
should  be,  as  it  were,  extensions  of  his  own 
power,  outgrowths  of  himself.  It  is  wise  for 
the  reader,  therefore,  to  have  a  large  share  of 
self-respect,  to  prefer  his  own  natural  choices, 
to  give  latitude  to  his  own  wandering  tastes, 
to  indulge  his  own  character.  He  will  give  a 
fair  trial  to  poetry  and   prose,  to  this  or  that 

174 


Practical  Suggestions 

author,  especially  when  recommended  by  long 
reputation  and  the  judgment  of  generations, 
but,  in  the  end,  he  will  read  or  not  read  ac- 
cording as  he  finds  his  own  account  in  it. 
The  good  reader  is  one  who  never  abdicates; 
with  him  rests  the  decision  in  his  own  case. 
Though  appearances  may  be  against  him, 
though  he  may  remain  long  or  even  always  in  a 
lower  range  of  taste  and  a  narrower  sphere  of 
knowledge,  it  is  better  so  than  that  he  should 
default  to  himself.  He  cannot  profitably  get 
ahead,  in  his  reading,  of  the  man  he  is;  he  can- 
not out-race  his  own  shadow  on  life;  he  must 
build  knowledge,  experience,  feeling,  his  world, 
in  his  own  image,  interpreting  what  is  new  by 
his  own  past  and  passing  from  the  man  he 
is  to  the  man  he  may  become  by  successive 
and  natural  stages  of  self -development.  Self-re- 
liance, to  trust  one's  own  nature,  is  as  radical  a 
necessity  in  literary  study  as  in  other  parts  of 
life;  it  is  the  best  way  of  man-making. 

It  has  already  been  remarked  that  the  simplest 
approach  to  literature  is  by  means  of  the  books 
nearest  to  the  reader,  which  are  in  the  main 
those  of  his  own  time  and  of  the  next  preceding 

age.     He  is  thus  introduced  to  the  living  ideas 

175 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

and  most  vivid  interests  of  humanity  in  the 
world  in  which  he  has  to  live.  An  exception 
should  be  made  of  the  greatest  books  of  world 
literature,  but  the  exception  is  often  more 
apparent  than  real.  In  their  universal  appeal 
these  books  are  contemporary  with  every  age. 
Don  Quixote,  the  Iliad,  Dante's  Divine  Comedy, 
for  example,  should  be  read  in  early  life;  such 
books  are  landmarks  of  the  intellectual  life  and 
give  proportion  to  all  later  reading;  others,  like 
Plutarch's  Lives  and  Gibbon's  History,  should 
also  be  read  in  youth,  and  they  have  the  advan- 
tage of  giving  a  vast  amount  of  human  history 
at  a  single  stroke,  expanding  and  storing  the 
mind  wonderfully  with  a  sense  of  the  extent  and 
majestic  movement  of  man's  historic  career. 
To  read  these  works,  whether  of  fiction,  poetry, 
or  history,  is,  at  the  time,  an  intellectual  feat, 
and  as  conducive  to  confidence  and  vigor  in  the 
intellectual  part  of  youth  as  winning  a  cup  or 
turning  the  tide  of  a  game  in  its  physical  part. 
It  is  immaterial  to  what  degree  the  works  be 
comprehended  in  their  fulness  and  power; 
the  reader  takes  what  he  can  of  them,  and 
though  he  were  a  mature  man  he  can  do  no 
more,  for  no  one  exhausts  their  richness;  it  is 

176 


Practical  Suggestions 

sufficient  that  in  his  youth  he  be  in  touch  with 
life  in  its  greatness,  and  there  is  besides  a  power 
in  the  years  of  boyhood  to  give  charm  to  such 
literature  that  is  missed  if  it  be  read  too  late. 
The  youth  reads  everything  as  romance,  such  is 
his  mental  freshness  and  the  warmth  of  life  in 
him  and  the  fascination  of  the  discovery  of  the 
scene  of  life  and  its  doings.  In  the  biography 
of  the  boyhood  of  genius  such  books  continu- 
ally crop  out  as  the  great  events  and  reveal- 
ing moments  of  the  boy's  life,  those  from  which 
he  dates  his  emergence  into  the  world  of  men, 
his  consciousness  of  the  powers  within  and 
about  him,  his  awakening;  and  what  takes  place 
in  the  boyhood  of  genius  measurably  occurs  in 
ordinary  youth  placed  in  the  same  circum- 
stances. The  great  books  of  the  world  should 
be  put  into  the  hands  of  youth  at  the  earliest 
possible  time. 

In  the  case  of  works  of  less  eminence  the 
natural  way  is  to  read  English  books,  and,  in 
particular,  those  of  the  last  century.  A  so- 
called  course  of  reading  of  any  sort  is  seldom 
a  very  good  mode  of  procedure.  It  is  better  to 
read  single  authors  that  attract  the  reader,  to 
read    a    good    deal    of  one  author  at  a  time, 

177 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

to  become  familiar  with  him  and  his  interests  in 
life,  as  shown  in  his  books,  and  with  his  ideas. 
If  one  has  appropriated  a  few  books  thus  with 
vivacity  of  interest  and  vigor  of  mind,  if  one  has 
made  friends  with  a  few  authors  so  as  to  know 
and  love  them  and  prize  them,  he  has  learned 
the  first  secret,  however  unconsciously,  and 
mastered  the  power  of  appreciation.  The  rest 
is  only  a  repetition  of  the  process  as  new  authors 
come  into  the  field  of  attention  and  new  tastes 
and  interests  develop  within  and  the  old  grow 
and  fructify.  In  such  a  way  of  reading  enthu- 
siasm should  be  an  increasing  trait,  and  enjoy- 
ment also.  The  value  of  a  few  authors  well 
known  and  liked  is  greater  to  the  mind  than 
that  of  many  authors  imperfectly  mastered;  it 
is  what  friendship  is  to  mere  acquaintance  in 
society.  A  course  of  reading  in  the  ordinary 
sense,  as  of  the  nineteenth-century  poets,  for 
example,  has  its  principal  convenience  in  the 
ample  opportunity  it  gives  the  reader  for  such 
a  private  selection,  but  he  should  consign  his 
fortunes  to  his  own  choices  or  seek  only  such 
guidance  as  may  serve  to  direct  him  to  new 
lines  of  attention,  to  open  ideas  to  him,  to  ex- 
ercise his  reflection  in  fresh  ways  and  to  give 

178 


Practical  Suggestions 

him  the  sense  of  sympathy  in  his  pleasures  and 
support  in  them.  It  is  the  reader  who  reads 
the  book,  and  what  he  puts  into  it  is  unknown 
to  any  one  else  except  by  an  intuitive  sympathy; 
the  reaction  of  his  own  past  on  the  book  is  often 
the  most  living  part  of  its  value  to  him ;  he  should 
be  left  much  to  himself,  or  if  not  so  left  he 
should  keep  much  to  himself.  The  best  readers 
in  colleges  are  those  who  take  their  own  way 
somewhat  carelessly  but  obstinately  like  Cal- 
verley  and  Emerson.  After  a  while  the  spheres 
of  the  favorite  authors  who  are  known  and 
prized  will  begin  to  grow  more  inclusive;  the 
authors  will  gather  into  groups,  the  Lake 
School,  the  brotherhood  of  Keats  and  Shelley, 
the  neo-pagans,  as  the  case  may  be,  and  the 
groups  will  begin  to  coalesce  into  the  romantic 
movement  as  a  whole.  When  this  stage  is 
reached,  the  time  has  come  for  such  aid  as 
literary  histories  can  give  in  tracing  the  con- 
nections of  the  age,  drawing  out  the  general 
traits,  the  historic  position,  the  antecedents  of 
the  whole;  such  information,  though  it  belongs 
to  history,  is  an  aid  to  the  fuller  and  especially 
the  more  intelligent  appreciation  of  the  authors. 
It  is,  however,  the  authors  that  should  be  in 

179 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

the  foreground  of  early  literary  study,  and  not 
the  period  or  the  movement  which  embraces 
them,  so  far  at  least  as  the  characteristic  literary 
power  plays  a  part  in  self-education. 

It  is  by  no  means  necessary  to  restrict  one's 
choice  of  books  within  nearly  contemporary 
literature  until  the  whole  is  grasped  as  a  his- 
torical period.  It  is  better  to  take  the  great 
authors  first,  who  give  scale  to  their  contem- 
poraries and  to  time;  to  know  Shakespeare, 
Spenser,  Milton,  Pope,  Gray,  among  the  poets, 
and  Bacon,  Swift,  Fielding,  Goldsmith,  Burke 
among  the  prose  writers.  The  rule  is  to  know 
first  the  greatest  of  all  and  to  be  familiar  with 
them.  In  English  it  is  of  little  utility  to  ascend 
higher  than  the  Elizabethan  age.  Chaucer  is 
a  great  writer,  but  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
his  language  is  a  past  dialect  of  English,  and 
to  the  general  reader  is  unintelligible;  outside 
of  Chaucer  early  English  literature  has  only  a 
scholastic  interest.  It  is  agreeable,  even  if  one 
should  never  command  justly  a  whole  period 
of  English,  to  make  acquaintance  with  some 
minor  period,  or  rather  group,  and  to  know  it 
with  thoroughness.  The  Lake  School,  or  the 
Queen   Anne  essayists,  or  the  religious  writers 

180 


Practical  Suggestions 

of  the  seventeenth  century,  or  the  cavalier  poets, 
or  Dr.  Johnson's  circle,  are  examples;  intimate 
knowledge  of  such  a  group,  with  which  the 
reader  has  a  natural  sympathy,  discloses  attract- 
iveness and  significance  in  literature  in  quite 
a  different  way  from  its  appreciation  in  single 
authors,  and  to  have  such  an  acquaintance  with 
a  group  is  a  mental  satisfaction.  The  minor 
literature  of  both  prose  and  poetry  in  English 
can  be  easily  controlled  in  books  of  selections, 
either  confined  to  a  single  author,  as  in  the  case 
of  Swift,  or  in  anthologies,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Elizabethan  lyric.  In  general,  it  is  unde- 
sirable to  confine  one's  choice  either  to  prose  or 
poetry,  or  to  any  one  kind  of  literature;  fiction 
should  alternate  with  drama,  and  the  essay  with 
the  lyric,  since  the  complexion  of  life  is  thus 
better  preserved  and  wholeness  of  literary  taste 
secured.  Neither  should  one  read  the  classics 
always,  and  think  time  wasted  if  bestowed  on 
less  imposing  books;  it  is  as  if  one  were  to  make 
the  week  one  eternal  Sabbath.  One  cannot 
in  literature  any  more  than  in  life  live  at  the 
top  of  his  forces;  and  whether  it  be  "the  difficult 
air  of  the  iced  mountain's  top"  or  the  breath  of 
Arcady   that   the   reader   inhales,   he   must   be 

181 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

content  with  a  less  refined  mental  diet  and 
common  books.  Humbler  literature  has  also 
its  place,  practically,  in  life,  and  discharges 
the  function  of  literature,  to  enlighten  and  con- 
sole, with  wide  effectiveness. 

The  manner  of  reading  which  has  been  in- 
dicated might  not  make  a  man  a  scholar  in 
English  literature;  but  it  is  assumed  that  what 
the  reader  desires  is  the  power  of  literature 
and  not  knowledge  of  it  in  itself.  If  one  desires 
the  knowledge  of  it,  he  approaches  it  scholasti- 
cally  through  dictionaries,  manuals,  histories, 
the  hundred  varieties  of  comment.  A  certain 
degree  of  knowledge  is  serviceable;  but  if  much 
is  required  to  make  a  book  intelligible,  it  is 
practically  a  dead  book  for  the  general  reader. 
Literary  history  is  the  most  untrustworthy  form 
of  history,  and  is  to  be  read  with  much  dubious- 
ness; the  subject  is  complex  and  involves  many 
intangible  elements.  The  shorter  it  is  and  the 
more  confined  to  a  tabulation  of  external  fact 
and  well  made  out  general  traits,  the  more 
useful  it  is  to  the  reader.  The  other  illumina- 
tion that  he  may  desire  is  better  found  in  the 
essays  of  appreciative  critics  like  Lamb  or  acute 
commentators    like    Coleridge,    in    biographies 

182 


Practical  Suggestions 

strongly  personal  in  their  narrative,  and  in  the 
history  of  social  manners,  the  fund  of  reminis- 
cence and  other  side-lights  which  make  us 
acquainted  with  such  a  group  as  that  of  Pope 
or  of  Johnson.  The  reading  of  memoirs,  gen- 
erally, is  a  great  aid  to  literary  study  since  they 
present  the  facts  in  a  strongly  human  form.  It 
is  human  truth  that  is  the  great  subject  of  litera- 
ture; it  is  the  scene  and  play  and  fortune  of  life 
itself;  and  to  substitute  literary  history  for  it, 
as  a  matter  of  lives,  dates,  periods,  movements, 
and  styles,  and  social  and  political  phenomena 
and  the  like,  is  as  if  in  art  one  were  to  read 
manuals  and  catalogues  and  theories  of  per- 
ception instead  of  looking  at  pictures  and 
statues.  It  is  true  that  the  education  of  the 
eye  and  heart  by  contemplation  of  visible  beauty 
is  a  subtle  thing;  so  is  the  education  of  the  soul 
by  literature;  but  it  is  a  very  real  thing,  well- 
nigh  omnipresent  in  life;  and  it  issues  not  in 
information,  however  detailed  and  well-ordered, 
about  the  thing,  but  in  insight  into  life  and  fate, 
in  sympathy  with  whatever  is  human,  in  appre- 
hension of  what  seems  the  divine,  —  issues,  that 
is,  in  the  greater  power  to  live.  This,  and  not 
mere  instruction,  is  the  end  of  literature;  and 

183 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

this,  and  not  mere  information,  is  the  end  of 
literary  study. 

The  approach  to  foreign  literature,  outside 
of  the  universal  works  already  mentioned,  is  a 
more  difficult  matter;  yet  to  know  English 
literature  alone  is  like  knowing  English  history 
without  the  history  of  the  continent,  and  it  is 
the  more  defective  because  foreign  elements 
enter  strongly  into  English  literature  which 
has  displayed  great  assimilative  and  sympathetic 
power  with  regard  to  the  literature  of  other 
lands.  The  question  of  translations  is  to  be 
met  at  the  threshold.  Greatly  as  opinions 
differ  on  the  subject,  it  is  useless  for  the  reader 
to  suppose  that  even  in  the  best  translations 
he  gets  either  the  original  work,  or  its  equivalent 
as  a  form  of  art,  or  in  its  native  meaning  to  its 
own  people.  In  poetry,  more  particularly,  he 
gets  only  a  diminished  glory;  to  read  a  great 
poet  in  a  translation  is  like  seeing  the  sun 
through  smoked  glass.  There  is  a  double 
obstacle;  the  form  itself  is  untranslatable,  the 
melodic  mold  of  life  in  language;  and,  in 
addition,  the  native  temperament,  mixed  of 
race,  circumstances  and  long  tradition,  is  as- 
sumed in  the  poem  to  be  in  alliance  with  it, 

184 


Practical  Suggestions 

to  respond  to  and  support  it  and  assist  in  its 
understanding,  and  the  more  national  the  work 
the  greater  is  its  reliance  on  this  suggestiveness, 
which  is  only  completed  in  meaning  and  reach 
by  the  power  of  the  race,  its  intuition,  its  ideals, 
its  associations,  all  that  is  unspoken  in  it  pass- 
ing into  the  poem  and  becoming  a  silent  but 
potent  language  there.  To  understand  a  can- 
zone of  Dante  or  of  Leopardi  one  must  feel  as 
an  Italian  feels;  to  appreciate  its  form  he  must 
know  the  music  of  the  form  as  only  the  Italian 
language  can  hold  and  eternize  it.  Translation 
is  impotent  to  overcome  either  of  these  difficul- 
ties; at  the  best  it  yields  an  imperfect  rendering 
of  both  form  and  meaning,  making  an  indiffer- 
ent appeal  by  inferior  means;  generally  in  the 
translation  of  a  great  classic  the  uninstructed 
mind  naively  wonders  why  it  was  ever  thought 
great.  Prose  suffers  less  than  poetry,  it  is  true, 
but  the  case  of  Don  Quixote,  perhaps  the  most 
untranslatable  of  prose  works  though  many 
times  attempted,  shows  the  presence  there  of 
the  same  difficulty. 

The  natural  approach  to  foreign  literature  is 
through  those  portions  of  it  which  have  a  near 
tie  to  English.     The  fundamental  tradition  of 

185 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

English  poetry,  on  its  foreign  side,  is  classical 
in  its  sources  and  is  continued  by  the  medium 
of  the  South  mainly  by  Italian  literature. 
Greece  and  Italy  have  contributed  most  to  Eng- 
lish poetry;  familiarity  with  their  literature  and 
the  Latin,  which  naturally  binds  them  and  is 
intermediary,  is  most  useful  to  the  reader  in 
his  study  of  English,  and  also  most  easy  in  the 
expansion  of  his  interest  beyond  the  domain 
of  English.  Greek  is  so  fundamental  in  our 
culture  that  it  is  hardly  possible  to  overestimate 
its  importance.  Whenever  the  reader  finds 
anything  about  Greece  that  he  has  not  read, 
it  is  a  safe  rule  to  read  it;  he  is  sure  to  find  it 
useful.  Whether  in  the  form  of  direct  trans- 
lations or  of  those  scholarly  interpretations  of 
the  Greek  genius,  literary,  artistic,  and  social, 
in  which  English  is  uncommonly  rich,  the 
study  of  the  Greek  is  a  means  of  growth  in 
literary  power  and  in  command  of  literary 
methods  and  points  of  view,  more  valuable  by 
far  than  is  the  case  with  any  single  literature 
of  the  later  world.  Its  usefulness  in  the  drama 
has  already  been  mentioned;  but  it  illustrates 
every  poetic  form  with  brilliant  examples  and 
is  hardly  less  universal   in  prose.     The  novel, 

186 


Practical  Suggestions 

in  its  perfection,  was  a  later  product ;  other  kinds 
of  narrative,  however,  were  practised  with  un- 
surpassed skill;  and,  speaking  generally,  Greek 
prose  is  unrivaled  in  beauty,  while  in  matter 
it  is  full  of  wisdom  that  grows  not  old.  The 
Greek  is  full  of  ideas  and  deeply  engaged  with 
them,  and  in  intellectual  interest  is  on  a  parity 
with  modern  literatures.  The  more  the  reader 
enters  into  these  writings,  the  more  he  wonders 
at  the  intelligence  of  that  people  and  at  the 
amount  of  their  literature  which  is  still  modern 
in  interest,  whether  as  a  picture  of  life  or  as 
a  discussion  of  truth  or  for  simply  aesthetic 
qualities.  Greece  is  the  most  interesting  coun- 
try of  all  in  a  human  way,  and  excelled  all  in 
the  art  of  literature,  which  is  the  most  human 
of  the  arts.  The  more  familiar  the  reader  be- 
comes with  Greek  books,  and  with  the  ideals 
of  the  people  that  produced  them,  and  the 
more  he  is  able  to  take  the  intellectual  and 
aesthetic  mold  of  the  Greek  into  his  own  mind 
and  have  Greek  habits  of  perception,  the  better 
is  he  fitted  for  literary  appreciation  of  any 
kind;  he  has  the  criteria  of  judgment  planted  in 
himself  and  carries  them  about  implicit  in  his 
mind.     It  is  for  this  reason  that  in  literature 

187 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

classical  education  was  so  efficient  in  the  past; 
it  developed  much  that  underlies  literature  and 
makes  it  instinctive.  The  reader,  though  not 
classically  educated,  can  still  regain  for  himself 
a  certain  part  of  this  lost  benefit,  by  attention 
to  Greek;  the  literature  is  in  itself  of  the  highest 
interest,  and  mastery  of  it  gives  also  an  under- 
standing and  command  of  the  literatures  that 
grew  out  of  it  in  later  days,  which  nothing  else 
can  replace. 

Next  to  Greek  the  Italian  is  most  important, 
both  in  connection  with  English  poetry,  which 
has  often  been  in  close  touch  with  it,  and  for 
its  own  poetic  value;  but  Italian  literature  need 
not  be  so  thoroughly  known  as  the  Greek. 
In  general,  English  acquaintance  with  it  is  con- 
fined to  the  few  famous  poets  and  one  or  two 
prose  writers.  Italian  literature  is  very  exten- 
sive and  is  of  a  high  degree  of  culture,  but  it  is 
not  easily  appreciated  unless  the  reader  has  an 
acquaintance  with  the  country  itself  and  a  love 
of  the  people  that  comes  from  personal  con- 
tact. The  Latin  literature,  also,  is  to  be  known 
rather  by  a  few  great  writers  than  in  its  broad 
extent.  It  is  best  approached  through  French 
critics,   who   present   it  with   more   intelligence 

188 


Practical  Suggestions 

than  other  scholars  and  with  the  comprehen- 
sion of  minds  native  to  it.  Finally,  French 
literature  is  the  most  useful  in  the  modern  field, 
both  for  the  abundance  and  vigor  of  its  ideas 
and  for  entertainment,  for  the  scope  of  its  view 
of  life  and  the  world  and  its  skill  in  the  literary 
interpretation  of  life  through  imagination  and 
reflection.  Paris  is  still  the  intellectual  center 
of  Europe,  of  ideas  and  the  pleasures  of  a 
refined  culture  of  every  sort,  and  in  French  is 
found  the  best  practise  of  the  literary  art  in  the 
modern  world.  Though  sporadic  writers  of 
genius  are  scattered  here  and  there  through 
Europe,  it  is  in  France  that  the  art  is  most 
surely  sustained,  most  variously  illustrated,  and 
fills  the  largest  sphere.  Its  literature  in  the 
past,  too,  is  one  of  the  most  splendid  in  the 
world;  for  centuries  it  has  not  failed  in  great- 
ness in  any  age.  It  is  nearer  in  temperament 
and  substance  to  the  English  than  is  the  Italian, 
and  therefore  more  accessible,  and  a  compre- 
hensive study  of  it  is  the  most  substantially 
fruitful  of  all  foreign  study,  though  it  is  less 
formative  than  the  Greek.  The  German  liter- 
ature has  had  but  slight  contact  with  English, 
and   that    not    important;    though    kindred   in 

189 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

language  and  to  a  less  extent  in  race,  the  Eng- 
lish is  by  its  culture  nearer  to  the  southern  and 
Latin  peoples,  and  much  that  is  characteris- 
tically German  finds  scant  welcome  in  English 
tastes.  Carlyle  illustrates  what  disqualifica- 
tions a  native  writer  may  acquire  by  being 
Teutonized  in  matter  and  style.  German  litera- 
ture has  but  few  great  works,  and  though  it  had 
one  flourishing  period  during  which  it  gave 
world-currency  to  its  ideas,  it  is  rather  by  its 
philosophy  than  by  its  imagination  that  the 
German  genius  has  affected  other  nations  and 
found  expression  for  itself.  The  English  reader 
naturally  looks  toward  France,  Italy,  and  Greece, 
and  is  more  sympathetic  with  Spain  and  the 
Orient  than  with  the  north  and  east  of  Europe. 
It  is  only  by  the  novel,  which  in  a  sense  has 
become  independent  of  nationality,  that  foreign 
literatures  outside  those  mentioned  are  prac- 
tically known. 

In  conclusion,  to  summarize  most  briefly 
what  has  been  said,  the  prime  consideration  in 
the  whole  field  of  literary  appreciation  is  to  avoid 
making  literary  study  a  study  of  something 
else.  Nothing  is  more  common  in  practise 
than  to  do  this.     All  knowledge  that  exercises 

190 


Practical  Suggestions 

the  mind  is  useful  in  its  own  way;  but  cul- 
ture and  not  learning  is  the  true  end  of  literary 
study.  It  is  a  power  of  life  that  is  sought, 
"more  life  and  fuller  that  we  want."  Imagina- 
tive literature  is  a  great  resource  for  such 
growth;  to  live  over  again  the  vivid  moments  of 
life,  as  they  are  set  forth  by  the  poets,  the 
dramatists  and  the  novelists,  to  see  the  procession 
of  historic  life  in  its  great  events  and  the  con- 
stitution of  man  in  its  surpassing  characters 
and  its  crises  of  fate  and  passion,  to  know  the 
human  truth  of  life  in  whatever  form,  is  the  end 
in  view.  It  is,  therefore,  a  fatal  diversion  of 
interest  to  attend  to  the  facts  of  literary  history, 
to  biographical  and  social  detail,  to  discussion 
of  the  problems  involved,  and  in  general  to  sub- 
stitute the  comment  for  the  text.  Such  study 
should  be  kept  strictly  subsidiary  to  the  eluci- 
dation of  the  matter,  and  so  far  as  possible 
should  be  dispensed  with.  The  question  is 
not  how  much  the  reader  can  know  about  the 
work,  the  author  and  the  age,  but  whether  he 
truly  responds  to  the  poem,  romance,  or  essay, 
and  finds  there  an  expansion  of  his  conscious- 
ness of  life,  a  stimulation  of  his  own  powers,  an 
inner  light  for  his  own  soul.     He  should  avoid 

191 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

the  comment  in  all  its  forms,  so  far  as  is  pos- 
sible, and  give  himself  to  the  work. 

Secondly,  he  should  take  the  greatest  masters 
first,  in  the  order  in  which  interest  in  them 
naturally  arises  in  his  mind.  Some  reasons  for 
this  have  already  been  given.  The  main  rea- 
son, however,  is  that  in  their  works  the  great 
and  commanding  features  of  life,  its  contour 
both  as  romance,  fate  and  character,  its  moral 
geography,  are  to  be  found.  One  who  has  read 
the  Hebrew  prophets,  the  Greek  dramatists 
and  Shakespeare  has  a  view  of  the  essentials 
of  life  in  its  greatness  that  requires  little  sup- 
plementing; his  reading  thereafter  is  for  defini- 
tion and  detail,  for  the  temporal  modeling  of 
life  in  different  periods  and  races  and  nations, 
for  the  illumination  of  it  in  exceptional  men 
and  women  and  in  high  types  of  character  or 
romantic  circumstances;  it  is,  in  general,  rather 
verification  of  old  truth  than  anything  more 
that  he  finds.  In  this  sense  the  great  writers 
suffice  of  themselves,  if  they  be  thoroughly 
known,  without  the  need  of  reading  many  books; 
this  is  often  to  be  observed  in  life,  for  it  is  not 
needful  to  read  much  but  to  read  well;  yet  it  is 
only  in  maturity  that  the  depth  and  power  of 

192 


Practical  Suggestions 

life  in  the  great  writers  is  realized,  and  the  way 
in  which  they  summarize  and  contain  the 
lesser  multitudinous  books  of  their  time,  and 
become  lasting  memorials  of  man's  life  in  their 
age,  is  understood.  If  these  writers  are  early 
known  a  longer  time  is  given  for  the  develop- 
ment of  this  richer  meaning  that  only  familiarity 
and  the  passage  of  time  can  bring  out  of  the 
page. 

Lastly,  as  was  said  at  the  beginning,  litera- 
ture is  a  means  of  extending  and  interpreting 
experience  so  that  the  reader  by  mental  growth 
may  become  more  truly  man  by  including  in 
his  view  the  compass  of  man's  life  and  develop- 
ing in  himself  the  powers  of  response  to  it  that 
he  possesses;  it  exists  for  the  use  of  the  indi- 
vidual in  self -development.  This  is  the  point 
of  view  that  has  been  maintained  with  perhaps 
wearisome  iteration  in  these  chapters.  It  is 
the  personal  appeal  of  literature  that  has  been 
dwelt  on  as  being  its  characteristic  value  in  cul- 
ture. Personality  is  the  genius  of  life.  It  is 
natural,  therefore,  that  those  books  should 
be  preferred  in  which  the  personal  appeal  is 
strongest,  and  this  has  been  indicated  as  being 
the  right  choice  of  the  reader;  and  also  those 

19S 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

books  should  be  preferred  in  which  the  matter 
is  put  forth  in  the  most  personal  form,  whether 
by  the  creative  power  of  the  imagination  in  the 
greater  kinds  of  literature  or  by  the  power  of 
narrative  and  criticism  in  its  lesser  forms.  In 
this  way  life  is  seen  most  vividly,  picturesquely 
and  with  human  excitement;  life  yields  itself 
most  richly  in  the  forms  of  romance,  whether  in 
imagination  or  in  fact.  Personality  in  the 
presentation  does  not  involve  any  diminution 
of  the  truth.  It  is  mental  truth,  not  material 
fact,  that  literature  gives;  literature  is  careless 
of  fact  as  such,  it  is  nothing  whether  the  thing 
was  actual;  the  reader  must  learn  to  live  in  the 
mind  and  not  in  the  senses,  in  principles  and 
not  in  facts,  in  ideal  reality  as  it  is  to  the  shap- 
ing mind  and  the  dreaming  heart  of  the  writer; 
and  even  when  the  traveler  relates  an  adventure 
or  describes  a  landscape  before  his  eyes,  it  is  by 
an  ideal  element  in  it  that  he  makes  the  true 
appeal.  Ideal  truth  has  its  best  embodiment 
in  a  person  and  the  human  events  that  happen 
to  him.  Life  is  then  at  its  high  tide.  Study 
has  great  deadening  power  over  life;  and  when 
the  reader  finds  this  deadening  influence  in  his 
pursuit  of  literature,  when  personality  begins  to 

194 


Practical  Suggestions 

fade  from  the  page,  and  the  abstract,  the  para- 
sitical, the  fact  encroach,  and  literature  becomes 
rather  a  form  of  knowledge  than  of  life,  then 
he  is  losing  the  proper  good  of  literature; 
and  he  should  seek  again  in  himself  and  his 
authors  the  vitality  of  a  personal  touch,  the 
connection  of  life,  the  power  of  human  truth. 
The  great  thing  is  to  remain  alive,  in  one's 
reading,  and  nowhere  should  the  principle  of 
life  be  more  sacredly  guarded  than  in  its  most 
immortal  presence, —  imaginative  literature  and 
those  other  forms  that  take  their  color  from  its 
human  methods. 


195 


2671 


J£^HERNREGI0NA1.  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000  695  196     6 


